Drowning in Fire (12 page)

With a final push, she thrust herself through the walls of her abode. The rock and clay opened, ate her, then spit her into the small, open space beyond. Her body was made of quartz and minerals, sand and magic, and it landed unceremoniously in the center of her doorless cave.

Though she’d just been human, and the transformation into Daughter of Earth had sapped much of her energy, she reached for her human form again. Pushed away the parts of her that belonged solely to the earth. The golden brown skin she loved smoothed out the hard angles of rock. Proud white hair tickled her shoulders. She curled onto her side on the clay floor, her short legs pulled up to her chest.

As her evolving human lungs expanded, she gasped for air. Always this shock, the first time breathing Within. The constant trickle of oxygen was just enough to sustain human life, and also just enough to be torture. It was meant to remind the Children of their original forms. It was meant to remind them that humanity and the Children had once been one being.

All it did was reinforce Aya’s belief that she well and truly belonged Aboveground.

Normally it only took a short time for her to become accustomed to the dense, dark surroundings, but now she couldn’t seem to take a steady breath. She was coughing, choking. Then something scraped down her cheek and landed with a plink in the clay, then another and another, and she realized she was crying.

Her tears solidified as they escaped, turning into tiny, rough diamonds. So many. Until she was surrounded by their glitter and could take no human joy from them.

This must be what betrayal felt like.

It had been only months since she’d last seen Keko, since the two women had last propped their feet up on a rock by a wintry mountain stream and spoke haltingly of things that the Chimeran woman probably found mundane but that Aya thought of as fascinating. Cars and ice cream and games, and those soft things you pulled over your toes when they were cold. Keko always made Aya smile with her frank descriptions and honest opinions. Especially when it came to men.

The last time they met, shortly after Keko’s rescue in Colorado and right before her war against the Ofarians was called off, she’d finally spoken to Aya about Griffin. Even though Keko’s words had been harsh, the expression on her face had been wistful and soft, and it was crystal clear to Aya—even though she was still learning about human emotions—how the Chimeran woman truly felt about that Ofarian man.

Over the years, since their first chance meeting in the forest the night Griffin had maimed that Chimeran warrior, Aya had come to relish their sporadic, solitary talks. Keko must have, too, because she often sought out Aya after Senatus gatherings. Though Keko was not human, she’d managed to teach Aya much about humanity and Aboveground.

And now Aya had sentenced her first true friend to die.

Another great shudder wracked her body. For a moment she doubted her choice to evolve because humanity hurt far too much. Then she forced herself to think of Keko, who loathed self-pity, and pushed herself up to sit.

It was going to be all right, she told herself. Griffin was going after Keko. Griffin would find her and bring her back safely. Griffin would keep the Source intact.

And Griffin would win a seat among the Senatus, laying grounds for Aya’s supreme plan—a plan with which the Father would never agree.

She’d been sly, just now before the premier, to make him think she was on his side. Just like how sneaky she had to be to make the Father think she still agreed with him and the ways of the Children.

So much duplicity. If she were caught before her evolution into human was complete, she would face the ultimate punishment. Something worse than death.

Please, Griffin
, she silently begged.
Find Keko and bring her back. Appeal to her heart, because I know that deep down, hers belongs to you.

A crack splintered open the cave wall. Aya rolled unsteadily to her feet, kicking dirt and clay over the diamond tears to disguise them. A tiny glowing root pushed its way through the short crack, pulsing with an energy she knew intimately and had once loved more than her own life.

Daughter.
The Father’s wordless voice emanated from the root.
Come to me and report.

 • • • 

Brave Queen. Good Queen. Mighty Queen. Show me your secrets. Grant me redemption. Make me worthy. Help me earn back my name. Guide me to help our people. Above all, award me
mana
,
your spiritual power
.

Each word matched the beats of Keko’s heels as they struck the moist earth. Each syllable made a prayer. Each footstep moved her closer to her fate. Her faith guided her.

At the end of this road, even death would be a prize worth winning, because the people who had shunned her would know what she’d tried to do, how she’d attempted something as significant as becoming the Queen herself. If death came, Keko’s name would be spoken with breathless wonder and respect.

If she lived, she would lead. If she lived, she would hear words of admiration with her own ears and see awe with her own eyes, and she would know that she’d earned it.

Keko had been walking northwest through the coastal rainforests near Hilo, Hawaii for nearly two days. She slept through the cool, rainy nights curled up against trees, protected by the arch of massive leaves. She drank from streams and pools, and nibbled on the food she’d stolen from the stronghold before sneaking away under the cover of night. She avoided lights and Primary homes and civilization, sticking to the remote natural areas.

She wanted her actions to match the Queen’s as closely as possible. No Primaries. No modern conveniences or roads. No assistance. Only heart and determination. Only love for Chimeran magic, Chimeran ancestry. When Keko came into the Queen’s legacy, she would touch the Source clean. Absolved.

And then she would succeed where the Queen had not. She wouldn’t be Chimeran if that kind of stature didn’t make her fire flare with anticipation and longing.

Keko hunted for something very specific: a signpost left behind, a marker from the ancients. Over the course of her life, the Queen had carved thousands upon thousands of prayers into lava rock all over the Big Island. These prayers called out to the Source, asking for guidance. Almost all of these prayer carvings had gone unanswered, left to bake beneath the sun for future generations to question, but one had actually worked. It was that rock that Keko sought.

Travel was slowgoing, traversing the hilly landscape somewhat inland from the water, weaving in and out of tall, straight trees that bent in one direction under the constant force of the ocean wind. Keko took her time, analyzing the Queen’s legends, making sure she headed in the right direction. She didn’t fear pursuit.

Chief wouldn’t try to stop her because even if she succeeded and earned the Queen’s name, he would be healed. Bane, out of duty and because of Chimeran rules, would be forbidden to search for her. She wondered if Chief would tell Bane about the disease, then decided no. He would want to protect himself. Chief would let her brother think Keko weak and stupid and desperate.

She put the two Chimeran men out of her mind, because there simply was no point in thinking of them. No going backward, only forward.

But the problem with not thinking about her brother and uncle meant there was more space and time for Griffin to slink in. It happened in the most unlikely of places, following random, unrelated thoughts. Memories and images of Griffin, sliding into the blank minutes of her life.

Griffin, kitted out in soldier gear, stalking into that Colorado garage where she’d been held prisoner. His pale-faced shock when he realized she was the captive. The desire that still floated behind his frustration and anger.

The open set of his mouth as she pressed her hands hard into his shoulders, pinning him down. Riding him until they both came with their eyes wide open.

The way he’d slowly run his hands and eyes over her body that last night in the Utah hotel. Memorizing her lines and curves. So many parts of him had been lost to time and she wanted all those details back. She should have memorized him, too.

Suddenly she wished she hadn’t burned his jacket, for reasons that had nothing to do with the wet weather.

It was raining again, though it looked like it might pass over quickly. Keko turned her face to the sky and let the new droplets hit her cheeks and closed eyelids. Water, water, everywhere, each strike a little bit of Griffin.

She’d been right to call him. A paralyzing doubt had overtaken her the seconds before she’d dialed, but the moment she heard his voice she knew she’d done the right thing. Only now did she realize she hadn’t actually apologized for the whole war thing. Words like that didn’t come easy for her, but maybe Griffin understood.

Or maybe he didn’t, and she’d succeeded in making everything worse by not spewing out all the things she longed to say. Now she’d never get to, and it was that loss of a chance that hurt the most. He would never know how much she regretted blaming him for her capture, how ashamed she was of her subsequent actions.

She wondered if he would think her quest foolish. The stern Ofarian leader, the Senatus hopeful, might appreciate her desire to take back what had been lost, to lead her people in her own right. But the man who’d murmured to her in bed about new chances and dreams for his race,
that
man would sympathize with her need to find the Source, no matter the cost—even though she would never be able to tell him the reason why without compromising innocents. It created a heartrending polarity.

Keko realized her feet had stopped walking right in the middle of a macadamia nut tree farm. He was doing it again. Griffin was making her veer off her path, steering her mind in directions it didn’t need to go, and he wasn’t even here.

With a violent shake of her head, she gritted out “Stop it!” and exorcised Griffin for good. She’d said her good-byes, and that was that.

FIVE

“I already know you don’t like it,” Griffin said, pulling out his old soldier’s vest from the back of the closet and tossing it on the bed, “so don’t even think about calling me ‘sir.’”

David scowled from where he leaned a hip against the blond wood dresser. With a hand scraping through his hair, he turned his head to look out the long bank of windows framing the slope of Hyde Street, Alcatraz hazy in the distance.

“No backup,” David muttered. “No nothing. It sucks and it makes me look like a shitty head of security.”

“No, it doesn’t. Not when I’m ordering you to stand down. Not when, technically, no Ofarian knows where I am or what I’m doing. If anything, I’m the one who looks shitty, but I’m okay with that. Hell, I’m used to it.”

David pushed off the dresser, its legs scraping an inch on the hardwood floor. “At least let me put up some soldiers in Hilo. In case you need them.”

Griffin threw a small backpack onto the bed to join the vest. “Absolutely not. The second Keko suspects I’m there for any reason other than to stop her from throwing herself into a volcano or whatever the hell it is she thinks she’s gonna do, she’ll put up a massive fight or she’ll vanish. No soldiers, David. Just me.”

“Fuck.” David gave Griffin his back and stared out the window, arms tightly crossed.

Griffin understood David’s frustration. After all, Griffin had had David’s position once. The major difference was that Griffin had just barely tolerated the old Chairman, while David was a brother in all but blood.

Gwen came into the bedroom holding a small cardboard box. “This just came for you.” She squinted at the PO Box return address. “From Adine?”

He took the box but didn’t open it, just tossed it next to his vest.

“What is it?” Gwen had never been one to mince words. Sometimes the Ofarian woman reminded him of a diluted version of Keko.

Griffin glanced at the box, debating whether or not to say. Which was dumb because there were no two people in the world he trusted more than those in the room with him right now. “Signature sensor,” he said.

Gwen reached out and tapped his forehead. “Is yours broken?”

He ducked away from her touch. “It’s, ah, something Adine has been working on for me. Something other Secondaries might be able to use. Something that enhances our own abilities.”

Gwen glanced at the box. “What do you mean?”

“It should, if it works right, be able to track signatures long after a Secondary has left a scene. Like a trail.”

“Adine can
do
that?”

Griffin shrugged. “Something she’s been playing with. Mixing technology and magic. I asked her to do this for me on the side, but by the way she jumped on it, I wonder if it was something she hadn’t already been pursuing. Which might scare me if it wasn’t Adine.”

The half-Secondary woman had no magic of her own, just an otherworldly brain when it came to anything with wires or code or technology. The Ofarians had saved her life, then had got her settled on her own two feet in the Primary world, so Griffin got a pretty steep discount on her otherwise astronomical price of services.

“Kind of like what Kelsey is doing with medicine and magic,” Gwen said.

At the mention of his doctor wife, David finally turned around. He scanned the sparse items laid out on the bed: the vest and the box with the sensor, a long knife in a leather holder, packets of freeze-dried food, a small first-aid kit, sturdy boots, and a single change of clothes.

“The vest still fit?” David smirked. “You’ve been behind a desk for the past five years. Got a little soft around the middle.”

“Asshole.” Griffin pulled on the vest. Far too many emotions accompanied the drag of the lightweight mesh over his T-shirt. All those pockets that had once zippered in tools of death.

When he had to let out the side straps a notch, Gwen said, “Aw, you’re not soft. Just old.”

“Great. Thanks.” Griffin was grateful for the tiny bit of levity.

The three of them stood within a companionable silence, letting their mutual past settle into the cracks of the situation. It wasn’t the first time they’d said good-bye, but each time carried its own feeling, its own baggage. It wouldn’t be their last either.