Drowning in Fire

THREE

One hour northwest of Madison, Wisconsin, there was nothing except the sword of the rental car’s headlights slashing at the skeletons of the cold, late-March forest, a sky heavy with stars, and the Senatus.

Griffin fidgeted in the passenger seat as David swerved the car through the hilly, dark countryside. Griffin’s knee bounced and one fingernail scratched consistently at the underside of his thigh. Anxiety drew down the corners of his mouth. His vision was a bullet shooting into the night, all his other senses hyperaware, desperate to pick up something—anything—that might clue him in as to what was about to happen.

Keko had called to say good-bye. Why? Why now? What the hell for? What was she going to do?

“Got your game face on, I see.” From behind the wheel, David threw a wry, obvious glance at Griffin’s twitching leg. “Might want to check that before you walk in there.”

Griffin immediately stilled and sank deeper into the seat, but didn’t respond. He hadn’t told David about the phone call from Keko. He’d stewed about it all last night—not getting a wink of sleep—and the entire travel to the Midwest. He couldn’t’ve called the chief even if he’d wanted to. Griffin’s sole connection to the Senatus was the premier, and he didn’t want to press his luck by asking how to contact the Chimerans directly. He also didn’t want to compromise Keko—whatever it was she’d gotten involved in now—because he had no idea what the chief did or did not know.

And he still had no idea what he would say or ask when he finally came face to face with the head Chimeran.

David glanced into the rearview mirror, fingers tightening on the steering wheel. “SUV coming up fast behind us.”

Griffin swiveled in his seat. The headlights of the massive black truck flashed twice. He glimpsed red and blue on the license plate: Illinois. Gwen, driving up to meet them from her home in Chicago.

“This it?” David braked and pointed at a sign for a private campground, the CLOSED FOR THE SEASON tag dangling from a pole.

Griffin double-checked his GPS for the coordinates the Senatus premier had sent him earlier that day. “Looks like it.”

David steered the car off the two-lane paved road and onto a gravel drive. The bones of bare branches stretched for them as they slowly rolled past. The drive seemed to go on forever, slicing deeper and deeper into the forest, until it finally opened up into a small clearing, a shuttered shack at one end, a ring of stones surrounding a giant, unlit bonfire at the other.

They parked next to two other vehicles, their headlights illuminating the premier and Aaron, the chief and Bane. No Aya as far as he could tell. Gwen swung her giant SUV on the opposite end of the line.

The signatures of Secondary magic zinged through Griffin’s mind. David ground fingers into his forehead, indicating he was feeling it, too. “At least we know we’re in the right place,” he said.

Gwen and David were waiting for Griffin to move, but he just sat there, peering out the windshield, memorizing the scene and the players’ placements.

The premier and the older air elemental Aaron huddled on the right side of the fire pit, the white vapor of their breath puffing out, and then dissipating. The premier, dressed in jeans and a bulky plaid flannel coat lined with fleece, still wore the same cowboy hat Griffin remembered from three years earlier. Short and slight, he shifted from foot to foot, stamping in the cold.

To the left stood the two Chimerans. Shirtless, shoeless, muscular, and powerful as all hell.

“Showtime,” Griffin said, and David killed the engine. The headlights died, then Gwen’s quickly followed, throwing the gathering into blackness.

Griffin unfolded himself from the car, heading for Gwen. It had been two months since he’d seen her, and though he wanted to pull her in for a hug, he didn’t.

“Thanks for coming,” he murmured instead.

She kept watchful eyes on the Senatus. “Of course. It evens the playing field for you.”

No one would dare speak their native languages with Gwen present. As a Translator, a rare genetic trait, she was able to pick up any language in an instant. Five years ago, that skill had changed the Ofarian world.

David flanked him on the other side, chuckling. “You ready for some Grade A groveling?”

Griffin didn’t want groveling. At least, not entirely. Maybe two days ago he would have been satisfied with a heartfelt apology from the chief because it would have meant a step in his desired direction. Not anymore. Now he wanted answers about Keko, but it was forming the questions that scared the shit out of him.

So many secrets had come to light since the last time he’d been in the presence of the Chimerans. So many more still buried.

Griffin’s mind whirred with a racket of magic signatures, and an intense churning of political analysis, strategic planning, and general nervousness.

“Chief,” said the premier in his flat Canadian accent, “a little light and heat, if you please.”

The symbolic lighting of the bonfire, calling the Senatus to gather. Griffin approached the ring of stones, his two most faithful Ofarians at his back. This would all be new to them, since last time he’d come here he’d been alone.

In the moonlight, he watched Chief bestow a regal, respectful nod to the premier, then give a curt, authoritative gesture to Bane, pointing at the piled logs. Bane, massive and glowering, stomped forward. It was difficult to look at him; he reminded Griffin of Keko so much—the same tint to their skin, the same dramatic arch of their eyebrows, the mixed Hawaiian heritage enhancing all their best features. Bane drew a Chimeran breath, the expanse of his muscled chest widening even more. He bent forward at the waist as he released his magic, a great and forceful spurt of gold and sunset flame shooting from between his lips. It struck the logs, which instantly caught fire.

Then, slowly and deliberately, Bane lifted his dark eyes and pinned Griffin with a hard stare. One that wouldn’t break under anything less than a tank driving between them. A quick ripple of flame flashed across Bane’s irises, and tendrils of smoke drifted out from between his lips.

“Whoa,” David said at Griffin’s shoulder. “You see that?”

“Yeah,” Griffin muttered.

“Maybe the war isn’t over. Thought they called you back here to bow down and apologize.”

That’s why the premier had, Griffin thought, and maybe the chief, too, but Bane’s warning had something to do with Keko—clearly personal and full of the very answers Griffin wanted. As he stepped into the stone ring, the fire’s heat struck but did not warm him.

The premier craned his neck to take in the other Ofarians, assessing. “Only two. Where’s the third? The one I asked you to bring, the one you found in Colorado.”

At the mention of Colorado, David and Gwen shifted in confusion. Griffin hadn’t told them about the premier’s request because he knew he couldn’t fulfill it.

“I don’t know where he is,” Griffin replied. “He took off over a month ago. He tends to do that.”

The premier gave him a squinty-eyed glare from underneath the brim of his cowboy hat. “He’s Secondary. Elemental. He is spirit to my air, to your water. He should be here.”

Griffin stroked his chin. “Yeah, well, there’s really nothing I can do about that. Sean’s his own man, he’s not Ofarian so I have no control over him, and he’s had a shit life.”

“I think you should find him.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to be found.”

The premier wanted to say a lot more, but he pressed his already thin lips closed.

Time to change the subject. “I want to thank you, Premier, for inviting me back,” Griffin began, adopting a more formal tone. Turning to the chief, carefully avoiding Bane’s continual stare, he added, “And I feel I should apologize, on behalf of my entire race, for what one rogue Ofarian did to your general.”

“Former general,” Chief barked.

It took immense effort for Griffin to hide his immediate reaction.

“Gentlemen,” said the premier, removing his hands from the crooks of his elbows and holding them up in stern warning, “we’ll begin discussions on the issues at hand when the Daughter of Earth arrives. Not before.”

“Good.” Bane’s voice rumbled and crackled like an inferno taking over a building. “’Cause there’s something I want to say to him.” He pushed out from behind the chief and started for Griffin.

Flashbacks to Makaha. Flashbacks to Keko’s too-late statement about not using magic in an attack.

Griffin planted his feet. Ready, if it was called for, to do it all over again.

“General,” the chief growled.

“Peace, Chimeran,” boomed the premier.

Bane kept coming.

Griffin stood his ground, dying to scream: What’s happened to her? Fucking tell me already!

Bane pulled up three feet away, his bare chest heaving, but not filled with Chimeran breath like Makaha. He nudged his chin into the deep shadows wedged between the trees. “I want to talk to you. Privately.”

David, Griffin’s head of security, jumped all over that. “Not outside the protection of the gathering.”

Griffin held up a hand but didn’t unlock his stare from the Chimeran general.

The chief appeared beside Bane, and Griffin could not read his face. It seemed to shift from worry to hate, desperation to fear. Griffin understood none of it.

“Gentlemen.” A sharp reprimand from the premier.

“No harm intended,” said Bane to Griffin. “Just words. It isn’t Senatus business.”

The premier crossed his arms. “Up to you, Ofarian.”

Without hesitation Griffin turned to David and Gwen. “I’m going. Alone.”

“But—” Gwen began.

“It’s not a discussion. Make sure we’re not disturbed or overheard.”

After sharing a long look, his two oldest and dearest friends fell back. When it came down to it, they had no choice in the matter. Maybe on another night he might regret ordering them to do something they so clearly didn’t like, but not on this one.

Bane headed off into the forest, the chief following, Griffin picking up the rear. He didn’t let himself think about how he was being drawn away from formal protection, didn’t let any sort of fear trickle in. His goal and a thousand questions propelled him to trail after the two wide, Chimeran backs stomping barefoot through the frigid forest. When they’d gone deep enough into the trees that the bonfire light didn’t reach and only the moonlight rained down, Bane stopped short and whirled on Griffin. Got right up into his face.

“She’ll die,” the general snarled. “All because of you.”

An invisible monster drove its great taloned fist right into Griffin’s stomach. “What’s happened?” He could barely get the words out.

“What’s happened?” Bane slapped his own chest, the sound violent and thick. “What’s happened? You’ve destroyed her is what happened.”

Griffin ignored the tingle of water magic, that sword of ice, begging to be released. “I did no such thing.”

Bane lunged. The chief was suddenly between them, pressing hands to Bane’s chest, pushing him backward. “General.” There was surprise in the chief’s voice. Also censure. Surprise that Bane could or would be so emotional about the sister who’d bested him in the past, and censure because the crazy rules of Chimeran society didn’t allow him to show such concern.

The chief turned around to face Griffin, and looked at him for a long, long time.

“Tell me,” Griffin demanded. “Great stars, just tell me. She called me and I”—he struggled mightily with how much to say, how much to reveal—“I don’t know what to think.”

The chief’s eyes widened. “She called you? When?”

“Yesterday afternoon. She didn’t say anything, only good-bye. Where the hell is she?”

“It should come from you, Chief,” Bane said.

By the strain on Chief’s face, Griffin knew that the head Chimeran did not want to tell him. That this little separate powwow had been Bane’s idea, and that if the chief did not talk, Bane certainly would.

With a long, slow sigh, Chief reached up and removed a thin, plain rope from around his neck. On it was strung a black rock no larger than a quarter, lumpy and nondescript. Griffin had noticed it before—it was the only thing he’d ever seen the chief wear on his torso—but he’d never given it much thought.

Now the chief held it out to Griffin.

He didn’t take it, didn’t even touch it. “What is it?”

Chief remained as even keeled as Bane had been dramatic. “It’s the symbol of the new Chimeran lands, of the islands that would eventually become Hawaii,” he said. “When our Queen first set foot on the Big Island, she picked up this very rock, held it up, and declared that she’d finally found our new home. That was fifteen hundred years ago.”

Behind the chief, Bane folded his big arms.

“And?” Griffin prompted.

The chief regarded the rock with a dazed sort of wonder as it swung on its rope. “The Queen brought our people across the ocean from Polynesia in search of one thing: the Fire Source. The food our powers need to breathe and exist in this world. It is pure, raw fire magic. She felt it call to her from the other side of the water, and bade her people to follow her to find it. This stone is the symbol of her quest. Of her love for her people. Of her leadership and bravery and selflessness. She is a goddess, in our eyes.”

So much to learn. And the Ofarians had once thought they’d known everything . . .

“What does this have to do with Keko?”

Bane came to the chief’s side and they exchanged a serious look. Chief looped the rope back over his neck. “Keko is trying to succeed where our great Queen failed.”

Dread nearly took Griffin off his feet. “What do you mean, ‘failed’?”

“The Queen knew the Source was somewhere on the Hawaiian Islands. She could sense the raw magic but didn’t know where it was, how to get to it. All she knew was that if she could find it and tap into it, she and her people would know more power than they ever dreamed.” The chief glanced away. “She spent her whole life searching. When she finally found it as an old woman, it destroyed her.”

Griffin swallowed several times to try to get moisture into his mouth. “And you . . . you think Keko is going after the Source.”

“We don’t think. We know.”

“How?”

“She left a note in my house. Yesterday morning before sunrise. Bane was with me when we found it. And Keko was gone.”

Griffin started to pace, soggy leaves parting beneath his boots. “Why?” he asked, but as soon as the word escaped his lips, he knew the answer. It made him nauseous.

“If she finds the Source and brings back the raw magic,” Bane said, “she will be greater than our Queen. Higher than ali’i, higher than any Chimeran in any of the island clans is allowed to dream. It will erase all her shame and make her into something new. She’ll be untouchable.”

“But you said the Source killed the Queen.”

Chief licked his lips. “That’s the belief, yes. Legend says that she did find it, that the power was hers for one brief moment before it destroyed her. It’s why no Chimeran has gone searching for it ever again. Because we don’t believe it was meant to be found. That we may borrow its magic from afar, but death will come to anyone who touches it.”

Great stars, no.

“Why didn’t she tell anyone else?” Griffin asked, a thought coming to him. “If all she wanted was glory and the chance to save face, why didn’t she announce what she was going to do to the entire Chimeran valley? Wouldn’t this kind of thing give her major status?”

The chief looked down, suddenly and strangely silent.

Bane jumped in. “She is desperate and depressed, Griffin, a lethal combination. Claiming to go after the Source would only bring her more scorn. We believe in proof, nothing less. Valor and strength that can be seen and tested. She’s on a suicide mission with no promise of glory at the end. Only a chance, and a very small one at that.”

“So she has nothing left to lose,” Griffin snarled, turning away so he wouldn’t have to look at the Chimerans as he thought it all through.

“No,” Bane said. “She doesn’t. And it all started with you.”

“What do you want me to do about it now, three years apart and with her gone?” Griffin snapped over his shoulder.

No response. Because Bane didn’t know. He was sick with worry over his sister—even though he wasn’t officially allowed to feel such—and he’d chosen to take it out on the man who was easiest to blame, even if the blame wasn’t entirely Griffin’s to shoulder.

Griffin got it. And he couldn’t say that he wouldn’t have done the exact same thing, being in his position.

The story made sense in his mind. His heart didn’t want to believe it, but the terrible squeeze and aching in his chest told him that it was true.

If Keko had taken off from the Chimeran valley yesterday morning, by the time she called Griffin she could have gotten to some town with a phone. Their conversation had seemed so cryptic at the time, but made a world of sense now. She’d known exactly what she was doing, what she’d wanted. What she had to do to get it. She’d sounded like someone saying good-bye when they knew they would never come back.

Goddamn it, why was the chief so quiet? Did he feel nothing for this woman who’d given him years of service and was of his own blood?

Griffin spun in an uneven, frustrated circle, scrubbing cold hands through his short hair. Did he wish he hadn’t known? Did he wish she’d never called him? Was there anything he could do?

“Keko will—” Bane began, but that’s as far as he got before the earth ripped open a short distance away and a voice poured out of its depths.

“THIS WOMAN MUST BE STOPPED.”

The voice crackled up through the forest, shaking the bare trees and making the stars go blurry. It was made of a million sounds at once: angry as fire, ethereal like a whisper, melodic like bells.

In the distance, Griffin saw the other Secondaries around the bonfire mobilize, scrambling for the forest, running toward the sound. Running toward Griffin and the two Chimerans.

In the foreground, a sapling shivered and tilted to one side, crashing into another. Under the moon, at the very edge of where the firelight reached, an irregular circle of cracked mud and scrubby brown grass shifted. He stumbled backward, out of its circumference. The ground churned as though in a blender, rocking and spinning and turning in upon itself.

The air and water elementals coming from the bonfire finally reached him, skidding to a stop when they noticed what was happening.

From the hole in the earth, dirt and roots and stones crawled on top of one another. Grass and mud wound around an invisible form, piling higher and higher, until it assumed the shape of humanoid legs. Clay and sand pushed up and around the legs, forming a torso. Branches shot out to form arms, little twigs for fingers. The dirt rounded atop the neck to form a head, and yellow-green grass sprung up from the scalp, curling around the face that started to appear decidedly female.

As the small nose pushed out from the round cheeks, the eyes turned otherworldly green, and the hair transformed to white wispy silk, he recognized that face. Aya. Daughter of Earth. Not completely of the natural world, but not entirely human either.

By the stunned and silent expressions shared by everyone around the broken circle, no one else had ever witnessed such an appearance of an earth elemental. Not even the premier. Before, she had always simply walked out of the shadows on human legs to join them around the fire.

“Listen to me.” Aya’s voice tumbled back into a normal register, closer to the feminine tones Griffin remembered from years earlier.

She turned to Griffin and the Chimerans, the movement incredibly fluid. As she did so, her body changed, solidified. Her skin turned the warm brown of a tree trunk, then shifted to the burnished tan of sand, only supple and humanlike. A foot made of roots pulled free from the clinging earth. By the time she set it back down it was solid, her toes curling over the mud. Leaves wove themselves around her body, cloaking her in a loose garment of glistening brown. The more Aya moved, the more human she appeared. More human than the last time Griffin had seen her, as though she’d developed further into this body, if that was even possible.

She raised a twig arm, and the leaves and flowers at the tip shifted into fingers. She pointed one at the chief. “Kekona Kalani must be stopped.”

The chief blanched under the weight of Aya’s declaration, his mouth going slack, his shoulders slanting toward the churned-up earth.

The premier pushed ahead of the Ofarians. “What did Kekona do now?”

Aya’s green eyes flashed with an inner light that reminded Griffin of deadly ice. She answered the premier but kept staring at the chief. “Kekona seeks power to change the world.”

Bane shoved forward. “That’s not true.”

“No?” A very human lift of pale eyebrows. “Kekona is looking for the Fire Source, the root of Chimeran magic. She thinks it’s harmless—you think it’s harmless—but that root is buried deep in the Earth’s core. It’s part of the foundation of this world, and the Chimerans have only been allowed to borrow it. If the Source is disturbed in any way, it will alter life. It will create death. If Kekona touches it, fire feeding fire, she could destroy continents or create new ones. Massive destruction that the Children of Earth would have no way to counter.”

The silence that fell over the wood was as ominous as Aya’s words. More revelations, more shock. And by the horror and distress and utter paralysis making twisted masks of the Chimerans’ faces, this was something not even they knew.

And Keko was already gone.

“The Children of Earth guard the Source. It’s one of our many duties, to keep the power sacred and safe, to protect it from disturbance and to protect the Earth from its wrath. I’m telling you now, if you do not find Kekona and stop her, my people will hunt and kill her, just as they did the last woman to lay claim to what was not hers.”

The Chimerans shared a look. “The Queen,” Bane whispered, reaching big hands up to clasp around the back of his head.

The premier thumbed back his cowboy hat. “Kekona has caused enough problems for the Senatus and for all Secondaries. She must be dealt with.”

“No,” Griffin protested, because Keko’s own people had not. “Don’t.”

Aya turned to him. The top of her white hair barely came to Griffin’s shoulder, but her presence was massive. “Don’t what?”

“Just . . . don’t kill her.”

Aya’s eyes flashed green again, but in a different way. Griffin couldn’t pinpoint exactly how.

“She must answer for her actions outside of Chimeran law,” said the premier to Aya. “Will you allow us to go after her?”

After several long moments, Aya ripped her eyes from Griffin to consider the premier, and though there was no wind among the trees, her leaf cloak and spider-webbed hair undulated. “I could return to my people Within now, tell them what’s happened, and give the order to hunt.”

Griffin wanted to object again, every muscle in his body straining forward.

“But a thousand years ago,” Aya continued, “there was no Senatus. No cooperation between our races. I’d hate to erase something we’ve built so determinedly without careful consideration. Can I trust you, Premier, to find Kekona before she reaches the Source and give her suitable punishment?”

“You can, Daughter. Absolutely.”

“Wait—” Bane started.

Aya nodded, ignoring the Chimeran general. “If you don’t succeed, if Kekona reaches the Source, she is ours and there will be no compromise. Agreed?”

The premier shoved his hands in his coat pockets. “Agreed.”

“You don’t want a war with us,” Aya added with a glance at the earth under her feet. “We will swallow you.”

Bane growled, a lick of flame passing from eye to eye. Why wasn’t the chief saying anything? Why was he just standing there, looking like he’d been bound and gagged?

The premier raised his voice. “Kekona will be found and stopped. I’ll immediately appoint a search team to get to Hawaii, and Chief can assign a Chimeran scout as a guide.”

The chief ground fingers into his temple. “Let me think about this—”

“There is no ‘thinking,’” the premier began, and the two men devolved into an argument over how exactly to go about the search. Griffin might have been mistaken, but it seemed as though the chief was actually trying to steer the premier away from going after Keko.

Damn his culture. Damn the rules of status.

Griffin stood there, a cold that had nothing to do with the weather seeping into his bones. They were going about the search in the wrong way. They weren’t properly taking into consideration their quarry. They were forgetting about Keko’s determination, her drive. Her spirit.

“Wait. Stop.” Griffin grabbed the premier’s arm and spun him around. A dangerous move since he still wasn’t part of the Senatus, but he wouldn’t be ignored. Not now.

The premier looked at Griffin’s hand upon his arm, then slowly raised his eyes. “Things sure have gotten more complicated since you showed up, Ofarian.”

Griffin released him but refused to look away, refused to back down. Yeah, maybe a lot of shit that had happened recently could be traced back to him, but if they were going to blame him for starting it, then he should be the one to bring it to an end.

“Keko will not be hunted and trapped like an animal,” he said. “Being chased by strangers who are intent on stopping her will only feed her purpose. Don’t you get it? She will fight and fight and fight until she gets what she wants, and she won’t stop running until she gets to the Source, if only to prove herself. Bane?”

The Chimeran general nodded haltingly. “He’s right.”

“What are you suggesting?” the premier asked.

Griffin licked his lips, stood tall. “Let me go after her. Alone.”

“Why you? Because she was your lover?” The premier sneered at that last word. “How do I know you won’t help her?”

“Because the Senatus means more to me.” He nodded at Aya. “And the protection of the Source, the earth itself. I want Keko brought in as much as you do. Let me prove my loyalty.”

Keko’s life meant most of all, but he couldn’t say that. Not when the premier eyed him so warily. Let the Senatus leader think Griffin wanted revenge for her trying to start a war. Let them all think whatever the hell they wanted, as long as it would allow him to get to her first. As long as it would allow him to save her life.

“I’m telling you, if she knows she’s being hunted, you’ll never find her. I have the best chance. I am water. What better way to fight a fire?”

“I second this.” A most unexpected endorsement from Aya. Griffin looked over at her, and there was that look in her eyes again. Something . . . unsaid. Something meant only for him.

“Chief?” prompted the premier.

In the span of his pause, the chief drew two breaths, neither of which brought forth fire. “I agree with what you think is best.” He bowed his head, and Griffin could not read his face.

The premier came toe to toe with Griffin, his voice low and authoritative. “If you find Kekona Kalani and bring her to me before she finds the Source, before she causes any more trouble for any of our races, I will know you have the Senatus’s interests at heart. If you do this, you will win your seat among us.”