Drowning in Fire (20 page)

Keko reached the edge of the patch of lava rock and launched herself onto it. If she could just touch the prayer, the Queen would protect her. The Queen would bless her.

Thunder emanated from beneath her feet. It wrinkled the rock, flowing toward the prayer, making the great tree over it shudder and tip.

Then the tree itself moved.

The trunk straightened, lengthening, like a man unfolding to stand from a crouch. The bulk of the tree swiveled toward Keko, its dome of branches becoming tens of waving, threatening leaf-tipped arms. A face shifted among the boughs. A man’s face, snarling and menacing, its eyes gold and silver, its amorphous mouth open in a soundless scream.

Keko skidded to a stop, the lava rock tearing into the pads of her feet.

The tree’s trunk cracked up the middle, becoming legs that ripped free from the earth, dislodging chunks of rock and sending Keko falling backward. Immediately she scrambled back to her feet.

The treeman was coming for her, his great strides eating up the space between them, each step grinding rock under the tangle of roots that were his feet.

What magic was this? Ancient Hawaiian she’d never heard of? The Queen’s? Elemental?

A great bough swung toward her, sweeping away everything in its path. Crackling, crashing, rumbling. The movement was lumbering and heavy, but coming fast.

She drew a Chimeran breath, but the bodily shock of hitting the ground and the narrow window of time only allowed her a shallow inhale. Deep enough to let her release a small stream of flame, though, and she spewed it at the bough coming for her. The tree was wet, however, its bark damp from the ocean proximity and the perpetual rain, its leaves unable to light. That shouldn’t have mattered to her magic, which meant he was doing something to parry her flame. The bough arm kept coming at her. Then another joined the attack.

She’d be crushed if she didn’t run, so that’s exactly what she did. She sprinted toward the edge of the valley, where she could use the steep sides, maybe climb above the tree. Then she’d make her way back to the beach and onto the narrow rock ledge. The treeman was too large and couldn’t follow her there.

A terrible screech filled her ears—one that sounded vaguely like her name being pushed through a grinder made of rage and vengeance. Did this thing
know
her?

Keko refused to panic. Chimerans didn’t fight this way, didn’t run—this was a new enemy, a new challenge—but she would find a way to defeat it, to get around it. There was no chance, however, to stay still enough to catch her breath. No chance to dig for her fire and let out enough to burn away and eat through the damp of the tree and whatever magic it was using. Fire knocked against the inside of her chest, begging to be let out. To do what it was meant to do.

For the first time ever, she wished Chimerans had been taught ways to defend themselves other than with fire and fists.

A powerful gust of air came at her back, the suck of forces that told her another bough arm was coming her way. The treeman had closed the distance between them.

“Keko! Keko!”

A man’s voice this time. A voice she knew. A voice that created more conflict than ease.

She couldn’t see Griffin but she could hear him drawing closer, the sound of her name getting louder. He was coming for her like the treeman. Working together? An attack from both sides? This awful creature was part of Griffin’s larger plan, maybe. A last-ditch effort to turn her away. His chase and his words had failed, so he’d summoned this thing. Or maybe it was a soldier of the Senatus, sent for her because Griffin had failed. Who knew what sort of magic the premier had access to? And Chief had hid so much from her, why not this?

The great splinter of tree boughs filled her ears and she knew it was close.

She veered to one side, changing course, trying to throw off the treeman, but his bough caught her in the back of her left shoulder, tearing across her skin, making her howl with pain. Sending her body airborne.

She flipped midair and hit the ground hard, skidding. Dirt and sticks wedged into what she knew to be a bad laceration across her upper back and shoulder. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she rolled to her side. The valley winked, and she could vaguely make out Griffin’s shape through the vegetation, sprinting toward her, a giant knife clutched in his hand. A two-pronged attack then.

It only made her more pissed off.

She would
not
lay eyes on the Queen’s prayer only to be destroyed by a magic being that could be leveled if only she could get enough fire. She would
not
fail her people because Griffin Aames wanted to sit gabbing with other elementals around a campfire in the middle of nowhere.

Biting back the agony, she flipped onto her raw back. Her knee felt wrenched, too, though she hadn’t known when that had happened. With her back pressed to the ground, she looked up. The treeman—massive and trembling with rage, that strange face among the leaves twisted in determination—loomed over her. He looked more man now, each terrible limb delineated in powerful muscles made of razorblade bark. Every bough arm pulled back, some ends making fists, others sharpened into spear-like points. He was gathering his strength, intent on smashing her, pulverizing her into the earth.

If she was going down, she was going down with her fire.

And she’d take Griffin with her, because she could plainly see him now. He charged through the last barrier of brush. Toward her. Mouth open in soundless fury. Blade shining in the blast of sunlight that shot down from the parting clouds.

Keko found her breath, took control of her heaving chest, and inhaled. Deep and long, the kind of breath that tasted of death. Fire magic built inside and shot up her throat. It dared her to use it. Despite the chaos, despite the danger, it brought her peace.

Oh, Griffin
, she thought in the moment the fire touched her tongue and she scrambled to her feet.
For a few days we were magical.

The boughs with their clubs and spears were descending, descending toward her.

She brought her hand to her mouth and fed her palm fire. Dropped her arm back to throw.

Griffin planted a foot on a chunk of tilted lava rock and launched himself off it. His body soared, making an arc. His face twisted with murderous intent, the long knife in his fist.

She released the fireball, arm and shoulder muscles screaming from the injury and the force of her pitch. Both targets were in range and scope: Ofarian and treeman. They would feel the power of her burning weapon.

Griffin’s body hit the apex of its curve and came down. Only not on her. Not anywhere near her.

He slammed into one of the legs of the treeman high up on the thigh, and held on in a three-limb clutch. The arm with the knife stabbed downward, piercing the bark that was somehow now half flesh. The treeman howled, boughs pulling up.

It was too late. Too late to realize that Griffin was helping her. The fire had already left her hands and was catapulting toward the treeman’s leg. Toward Griffin.

“Griffin!” she screamed.

He was holding on to the knife handle with both hands, the blade dragging down and through the treeman’s strange flesh, when he looked up and saw what was coming for him.

The fireball hit.

Griffin fell. His body struck the ground, crumpling at the feet of the treeman. The stink of burned hair filled the air.

One of the treeman’s boughs shaped into a human hand as it plucked out the knife from its thigh. A piercing wail—a shriek not born in this world but delivered through the mouth of one of its strange, awful creatures—drowned out all other sound.

The treeman was shuddering, stiffening. Its movements turned jerky and rigid as the human parts of him surrendered to the tree. It bent forward, cracking branches pressed to the leg that bled a mixture of red human blood and a clear, viscous substance. Its screams faded, trickling out through the tips of each leaf.

Keko could
see
the human part of him leaving the tree, moving down from the top of the canopy as though the man were being sucked into the ground through the trunk. The legs jammed back together, the trunk bulging outward as the tree expelled the inhabiting humanity into the dirt. The roots shivered, clamping to the ground, burrowing down.

With a final sigh, the treeman went perfectly still. It was no longer any sort of a man, but just a tree. A gnarled, twisted
Acacia koa
tree half bent into itself, with a pale, bulbous, jagged scar running down the right side of its trunk.

Griffin lay sprawled at its base.

Worry and panic overtook Keko. But it was the anger and confusion that set her feet to the earth, sprinting over to him.

He lay on his back, heels kicking into the ground, hands covering one half of his face. The one visible eye was squeezed tightly shut. He bared his teeth, sounds of pain leaking out from his throat.

In a terrible flash she was reminded of the story of the Ofarian man who’d wandered into the Chimeran valley a quarter century earlier. How her people had set him aflame and sent him back to the mainland permanently scarred to serve as a warning. A living, breathing
KEEP OUT
sign.

Brave Queen, what had she done?

She hated this concern, this fear over having injured someone. It was such a foreign feeling and it completely threw her off guard. Chimerans weren’t supposed to question their victories. They were just supposed to have them.

Then she finally noticed the thin but constant stream of water that poured out from under Griffin’s hands. It trickled over his temple and ear and right cheek. The sounds of his pain lessened, his lips closing over his grimace, the tension in his body slackening. Finally his visible eye opened, blinking up at her. He peeled away his hands.

The water had washed away the dirt on one half of his face. He had been struck, but not full-on as she’d pictured or feared. The flames had grazed a bit of his temple, taking a small section of hair near his ear. There was some blood and bubbling of skin, too. He’d scar, but the quick application of water had helped, and the whole thing was much, much smaller than his entire face melting off, as she’d imagined.

“Griffin . . .” She had absolutely no idea how to react. How to deal with or show the relief and shock and turmoil that raced through her. She fell to her knees a safe distance away—because her legs simply gave out and because she didn’t want to be close enough to touch him. “What the
hell . . .”

He struggled to his elbows first, then pushed up to sitting, his long legs bowed out in front of him. He tested the tender, oozing spot on his head and looked up at her from under his lashes. “Good thing I wasn’t expecting a thank you.”

She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. She was just so . . . confused.

“Hey,” he said. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

The hands came away. “Huh?” Dimly, she thought that maybe she had been injured in the fight, but nothing could get past the image of Griffin attacking the treeman in her head.

He eyed her questioningly, and she ignored him, turning instead to look at the bent and inert
Acacia
.

“What was that thing?”

“My best guess?” he said haltingly. “A Child of Earth.”

Her head whipped back around, and she could feel her stupid hands trembling from one shock after another, coming like blows to her body. “You think . . . you mean . . . that was
Aya
?”

No. No way. She’d spent many hours talking with the small woman with the golden skin and wispy white hair, and those sparkling green eyes that owned both unimaginable depth and attractive innocence. Keko had actually enjoyed those moments, speaking with someone on a level that did not involve Chimeran politics or sexual desire. She had felt the kindle of friendship, of caring and interest on an entirely new level, and she would have sworn that Aya had felt the same.

“No.” Griffin, too, frowned at the tree. “I don’t think that was her.”

Keko pressed fingers to her throbbing forehead. “You must be right. I
hope
you’re right. It felt male to me.”

“It did to me, too.” A dark look swept over him that spoke of anger, which didn’t make much sense. None of this did.

A distinct, thudding pain began in Keko’s shoulder and started to shoot down and across her back, but she had no time for it. No brain space left to address it. “I didn’t know they could do that, change themselves. In all my years at the Senatus, I’ve never seen that. And I’ve only ever seen Aya.”

Griffin’s face was blank. Too blank.

“Have you?” she asked.

“I saw . . . something similar.”

“From Aya?” Keko rocked to her feet and the world gave a little lurch. “Is that how this happened? You were at the Senatus and saw her do something similar? And then you two banded together to come after me? Was that treeman part of—”

Her body and head felt strange. Pockets of numbness and pain traded places, sending her mind reeling and making her tongue feel thick.

“That’s not what happened—Keko?” A familiar face appeared before her. Concerned dark eyes capped by straight, dominant eyebrows. “Are you okay?”

Why couldn’t she see Griffin clearly? Why did he sound so far away?

“Keko?”

The sky tilted, turning on its side. Weird. And then she was flying. No, not flying. Falling. Falling from where she’d just shot up into the clouds. She toppled sideways, knowing she was about to hit the ground but unable to stop herself.

Something caught her, and it wasn’t lava rock or wet Hawaiian sand. She was cradled on her side, the embrace around her both firm and kind, dusty and sticky. Grit scraped against her legs and side, and she was surrounded by a scent that was decadently familiar.

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.” A voice in her ear. A voice she’d heard in her dreams many, many times.

He was touching the skin on her shoulder and back in places just outside the borders of her pain. Those hands she knew, too.

“Keko, stay with me. Can I get you to sit up?”