Drowning in Fire

SEVEN

Time worked differently Within.

Though days had passed Aboveground since the Father had summoned Aya to report on the Senatus gathering, she just now carved her way through the earth toward him. He would never comprehend the time differential. She could show up next year and he would never know. His existence was beyond days or nights, his awareness so entirely different from the humanity Aya would one day adopt.

Arriving at the center of the Children’s world, deep in a secret place below the surface, she expelled her earth form into the maze of dark tunnels surrounding the Father’s home and assumed her chosen human body. Here, the Father’s energy—his influence and power, and the ancient history of her race—pulsed up through the floor and radiated out from the walls.

She also felt the completely different kind of human presence trickling down from the world above. It had a magic of its own, and it got stronger and stronger the more human she became. It called to her. Begged her to finally release the form of a Daughter of Earth and become a real-life guardian angel for their sister race.

Soon. Soon. She had a plan to see through first, and it relied on Griffin Aames.

Aya walked slowly through the caverns, the walls glowing with lights emanating from stones placed at intervals. Sons and Daughters moved about, their rock and mineral bodies making the whole place seem to undulate. Down one passage she glimpsed a human man, his pale skin smeared with dirt, his eyes huge and hollow and bright against the black of his soiled body. He dragged a small brush over the walls, never missing a spot, cleaning away crumbs and pebbles. Then he bent down, scooped the debris into a bucket, and shuffled off down the shadowed passage to deposit it somewhere unseen.

And so would go his days from now until his cold, lonely death.

That man had chosen to evolve. He’d stood before the Father—as Aya had done not so long ago—and declared he wanted to embrace humanity over being a Son of Earth. The irreversible evolution complete, he’d taken his desired place among the humans. But instead of working to protect and help them, as was his responsibility, he’d caused death. His mind had snapped. He’d attacked a woman, and then took her life.

Sometimes the evolution did that, the permanent shifting between races too much for a single body and mind to handle. When that happened, offending Children were brought Within in their human forms to live out their punishment. What punishment was worse than being denied the very world you’d longed to be a part of?

If the Father discovered that Aya had revealed the Children’s true form to the Senatus by unfolding from the earth right in front of them, she could suffer the same fate before she ever discovered the depth of personal connections. Before she knew human touch. Before she knew passion.

Placing her precious human hand to her chest, right over the steady, beautiful thump of her human heart, she drew a shaky, thin human breath and continued on.

At last she came upon the Father’s chamber. The great cavern, the very heart of Earth, would make scientists drop to their knees with tears in their eyes. The passageway leading into the cavern ended abruptly, the ground disappearing sharply into nothingness. Utter blackness extended below and above and to either side, but directly in front of her, across the chasm, was the Father.

No longer made of anything human, he’d chosen his form thousands upon thousands of years ago, and this was what he’d become: a great wall of rock, an abstract face in the stone and mineral that rivaled the height of some of Earth’s tallest buildings. Though he had no eyes, he saw her. Though he had no ears, he knew what she said. His body was intertwined with this planet, his limbs a system of millions of roots that stretched to all corners of existence. Even now they grew, pushing through ore and rock, forever expanding.

This was what she might have become, should she have chosen to remain a Daughter, and should she live as long as he.

Come forward, Daughter.

No mouth, but his words invaded her mind.

Giant chunks of rock and earth broke free from unseen walls amidst a symphony of cracks and rumbles. The pieces flew in from the shadows—above and below and from both sides—and barreled toward Aya. They slammed together at her feet, fitting into a puzzle to create a hovering walkway that extended out from the passage opening.

She stepped out onto the ragged, mystical bridge and made her way to the end, bare toes just inches from the edge. There she stopped and lifted her face to the awe-inspiring, paralyzing being above. She told him about Keko and the threat to the Fire Source.

Aya spoke English from her human mouth, because the Father understood all forms of Earth’s communications. “I debated whether to order Kekona Kalani hunted right then and there, the moment I discovered what she was doing, and the threat to the planet and to its people, but in the end I felt diplomacy was most important.”

Why?

“We’ve spent over a thousand years monitoring Secondary actions, keeping them in our eye and under our thumb. They still need to think we are on their side, and if I ordered a Chimeran put to death we’d end up separated from them, maybe even at war. We wouldn’t be able to track how they interacted with humans. We wouldn’t ever know if humanity would be threatened before it was too late. I had to make sure they still trusted me and the Children. I had to make them believe I was holding their interests and concerns to heart. That’s why I gave them a chance to go after Keko first.”

The Father did not respond. He usually didn’t, unless he had something specific to say.

“I’ll warn Nem,” Aya said. “If Keko finds the Source, he has permission to destroy her. If that happens—and I don’t think it will—the Senatus will at least understand we made appropriate compromises.”

It hurt to say. She used that pain to relay the story in a way that would appease the Father. She used those feelings to lie, lie, lie. All for the benefit of humanity, she told herself.

In truth, Aya had been struggling to find a way to get Griffin accepted into the Senatus, since the air elementals and the Chimerans stood so firmly against him. Griffin believed as she did, that the Secondaries had to find ways to work themselves into the human world—an opinion the Senatus hated. A viewpoint the Father opposed. After all, the Children were tasked with watching over humanity, their sister race. Once Secondaries started arriving on Earth millennia ago, that watchfulness had included keeping magic separate from human life.

Before she chose evolution, before she’d been assigned to the Senatus, Aya had believed as the Father and as all other Children do. Then she’d tasted life Aboveground and felt in her heart there had to be more. Her opinions had changed, but she had to pretend they hadn’t.

And now Keko’s crazy and reckless act had presented Aya with a previously unseen opportunity.

Griffin would bring Keko back alive. He would keep the Source from causing massive global destruction and he would earn an equal seat among the other elementals. Aya would gain her needed ally on the subject of integration. Griffin would be able to work ideas on her behalf and she would not risk punishment Within.

It was precarious. But it was worth the chance.

• • •

Aya spun through the earth, a drill made of magic and life, churning her way through the plates below the Atlantic Ocean. If she were Ofarian she could travel by water, but the Children were only tied to solid earth and what grew out of it, no more. It was the reason they were charged with guarding the Fire Source but could not touch or manipulate it.

Still Within, she located her island and arrowed northeast toward it. Her island. Her secret, special place in the human world.

As she breached the surface and burst out from the rock and dirt, even the weakest rays of the sun sent a welcome warmth cascading over her body. She unfolded from the ground as a mound of limestone. Her limbs rolled out and away in miniature avalanches, her fingers extending from stacks of pebbles. Lumbering to her stony feet, she pushed humanity into her extremities, lifting her head, feeling the first brush of hair over her shoulders.

For the first time ever, the transformation was painful.

Here on the edge of the world, standing on a windswept cliff on the northwest coastline of Ireland’s Aran Islands, Aya felt the sting of the cold, the slice of hard, sporadic rain. She ripped a thin sheet of limestone from the cliff face and whipped it around her naked body, the rock moving according to how she commanded—like fine, beaded fabric—its protection from the elements stemming from her power.

The ocean below was a churning mass of hard gray and bitter anger, the air salty. She drew in breath after breath and waited.

Soon, after her evolution was complete, she wouldn’t be able to just appear here, where she valued the pristine natural beauty and the utter solitude. She would have to take an airplane, and then a train, and then a ferry. She’d have to drive a car to find this general area, and then hike on her two feet to this very specific place.

She wondered if she would actually ever do that, or if this spot would become nothing more than a wish and a memory. For now, however, she would keep these moments of freedom and sparse sun and clean air.

The ground suddenly rumbled and she lost her balance. One arm shot out to grab at the limestone, and her fingers shifted form to meld with the stone and keep her from pitching over the edge into the water below. She held fast, her head swiveling to her left, toward the source of the rumbling.

Six feet away, the cliff face bulged outward. A gray, blocky leg kicked free, a heavy limestone foot coming down. A second leg followed. Then a torso peeled away, making the new arrival at least a foot taller than she was. The arms were the last to form, thicker than hers, decidedly masculine.

Nem’s human body came to him extremely quickly, and when his facial features smoothed out they retained none of the strain Aya now carried after her transformation. His skin didn’t have a more natural hue yet, still desperately clinging to the burnished silver-gray from which he’d just emerged. His hair made high, faint tinkling sounds as the shining white strands brushed together in the wind. It would be a year or so before he appeared human enough to walk among them. He had, after all, only recently chosen to evolve.

Nem looked down at himself, watching his human body fill out its shape with an equal mix of curiosity, awe, and disapproval. The last thing to fully transform was his right arm. It shifted from stone to plant, the length of it a thick green stem, his palm the great black circle forming the center of a sunflower. Long, delicate yellow petals shot out from his palm. Then the wind grabbed and ripped free those petals, leaving only five, which became his fingers.

A sunflower petal tore off and slapped against the cliff face, becoming lodged in a crevice. The others whipped away to Aran Island places unknown or to bob on the undulating waves below.

Nem flexed his new fingers, making a concerned face at the stiff movements.

“You still do that?” she asked, releasing her rock hand from the limestone. “With the sunflower?”

“It helps the transition,” he replied, flipping gold and silver eyes up to hers. “It keeps me calm. It releases some doubt.”

She sighed, her eyes briefly closing. “I didn’t ask you to choose evolution.”

He looked bewildered, but since he’d only just started to experience basic human emotions, he wouldn’t even understand what he was feeling while in this body. Not for a while yet. “But we’re to be mated.”

“We were to be mated. That was before I made my choice.”

He frowned at the arm that had been the sunflower. One finger pressed to the bare skin on his chest, then slid down over his belly. She’d done that, too, back in the beginning. Back when her body was new and strange.

Not having control over his emotions yet made them all readily available and apparent, playing in vibrant color across his face. “I evolved to have you. I did this so that our Son or Daughter would have our combined strength and guard the Source after I am human.”

“I can’t give you an heir anymore. I’m too far along for that. My body can no longer carry a Child of Earth.” And until their bodies were fully compatible again—human to human, not human to Child—mating was out of the question. She was secretly glad for the time and space that disconnect would put between them, because now that she was more human than Child, she was beginning to understand what it meant to want someone else for something other than mating.

“The Source needs a guardian after my evolution.” His voice was rising, his frustration growing, his confusion and inability to fully understand the differences between the worlds heightening the stress of everything.

“Then you need to find another Daughter as mate. Quickly.”

To Aya, the whole thing was very sensible.

“But I want you!”

The sharp shout bounced off the rock behind her and came back to hit her in the ears a second time. She jumped. Instantly a look of horror crossed his face, followed by a tense gathering of the skin between his eyebrows.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I feel like that was inappropriate somehow.”

His fists uncoiled from where they’d gathered at his sides. The aggressive forward tilt of his torso pulled back. His wild eyes searched the ground at her feet.

Aya exhaled, admittedly a little scared, a little thrown. When she’d been at Nem’s stage, she remembered screaming in the confines of her home Within. Screaming so no other Child would hear. It was only when she went Aboveground that she didn’t have that panic or fear. That’s how she’d known she’d made the right choice. Nem, however . . .

He straightened his shoulders, calmed himself. “Why did you ask me to come here? It’s a long way from where I ought to be.”

She was grateful for the return to matters at hand. “I know, but I couldn’t go to Hawaii. If she saw me . . . if he sensed me . . .”

At Nem’s utterly confused look, she stepped closer, meaning only to comfort. She caught a glimpse of the magnificent-looking human he would become, and she stopped her advance, because that felt entirely wrong to think.

“The Source may be compromised,” she said.

Humanity escaped him. Just vanished. His skin crackled and went solid. Limestone pushed out of his skin, then he seemed to realize what had just happened and he snatched back the human form.

“You called me away from the Source to tell me this?” He started to twitch, to pace.

“As I said, I can’t go there. Too much is at risk.”

She told him everything that had happened at the Senatus—everything but her own agenda.

“You let her go after the Source.” His voice was very dark. “When you know what damage she could cause.”

Aya folded her hands in front of her, the short cloak of pebbles swinging around her body. “No. I made a strategic move to keep our position solid within the Senatus. I have every confidence in your ability to protect what your line has always kept safe.”

Please believe me, she silently begged.

Nem planted his hands on his hips. “Are you as confident in this Ofarian? That he’ll capture her before she finds it?”

Aya shrugged. “Does it matter? We have the advantage and the victor’s spoils, no matter the outcome.”

He started to shift on his feet and she knew he longed to dive back into the earth. Maybe he wouldn’t recognize what showed on his face just then, but she knew very well what it was.

Intent to harm. Murder.

She came forward to calm his frenetic movements with a hand to his arm. He stopped instantly, his eyes snapping to the place where they touched, human skin to human skin. The first time for him, likely. The second for her, after a brief moment of contact from Keko over a year ago. His dewy lips dropped open and he swayed on his feet. Aya removed her hand.

“I need you to promise me,” she said, “that you will not go after Keko before she reaches the Source.”

“What?”

“I need you to promise me that you will let this play out, that you will let Griffin do what he must do. If he fails, if Keko finds the Source, then she is yours, but not until then. I need your word. I need you to understand what I’m asking. That’s why I called you here.”

Nem inched away until his back struck the limestone. His skin started to shift on its own, silver-white cracks smearing over his shoulders and around his waist.

“You’ve changed,” he said.

“That’s what happens when you evolve.”

“I didn’t mean your body.” As he said it, his gaze swept from her face, over her shoulders, and down her torso. His mouth slackened when he came to her breasts. His brow furrowed when his gaze skimmed over her bare legs and the covered junction between them.

She didn’t quite understand her revulsion, only that she didn’t care for this very human reaction from a man who wasn’t entirely one yet. It made her feel uncomfortable. Unwelcome. Unsafe.

She knew of human mating, how it was done, the physical aspects of it. But Nem knew nothing, only what his human body was telling him. She didn’t want that with him. Not one bit.

With a gasp, Nem glanced down at himself, down to the place between his own legs. Uncertainty twisted his features. Then anger. His head snapped up and he pinned her with a severe, glittering stare.

“I didn’t mean your body,” he repeated. “I meant your mind. What’s happened?”

She started to panic and desperately tried to maintain her composure. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He pulled himself away from the cliff with a hard clink of broken rock and a dusty shower of pebbles. “Is it that air elemental?”

Her stomach felt funny. “What?” And her voice sounded odd. Too breathy, too scared. Too out of her control.

Nem advanced another step, but she couldn’t back up or else she’d go over the cliff and into the waves. Oxygen dwindled, like she was trapped Within again.

“That’s what I thought,” he said, nodding.

Aya tried desperately to recover. “What air elemental? What are you talking about?”

“The new one the premier brought in recently to wipe the minds of humans. The man with the curly hair.”

The only way Nem could possibly know about that particular air elemental was if Nem had been in Canada last month when the premier had summoned Aya to his race’s compound.

Now it was her turn to advance, anger and fear roiling through her body. “You followed me? To a private meeting with the Senatus premier? The Father will have you locked Within—”

“You won’t tell him.” Nem’s voice dropped, and she’d never heard him sound so utterly human. “Because then I will tell him how you revealed yourself to the Senatus. How you compromised the secrecy of our entire race. I’ll bet you didn’t mention that part to the Father when you told him the rest. You made the mistake of telling me.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“And then I will tell him that once you become human, you will not be interested in mating with another human, but a Secondary, an air elemental. That, above anything, will see you trapped Within until you wither and die as flesh and not of earth. Alone.”

Aya’s entire body shook with a rage and frustration that was completely new to her human mind.

She tried to fight it, but that air elemental’s face stabbed into her vision. His haunted, distant pale blue eyes, the hair Nem described . . . She’d only seen him that once, over a month ago, but the memory taunted her with a need and want she didn’t know how to hide or react to.

She thought she knew this new world. She thought she knew how to live within it. A Son of Earth had proved her wrong.

“It seems,” Nem said, turning away and speaking to her over one broad shoulder, “that for once in our existence, we have reached a mutual understanding.”

He punched a fist into the limestone, half his arm instantly disappearing. Then he stepped through the cliff face, the earth swallowing him easily, gracefully, to return to the island place Aya could not go.