Drowning in Fire (18 page)

She quickly severed that line of thought, snapping her jaw shut against the water. It splashed on her chin and chest and she stepped away, almost tripping on a root in her rush.

“Better?”

It had been years since she’d heard that tone in his voice. That ravaged, hoarse quality he’d used when he told her he’d never stop wanting her.

She shook her head, rattling out her anger and wits from deep inside, pushing them to the forefront. She would not be swayed by whatever it was Griffin Aames was trying to use on her. Her purpose was far, far more important than sex. Greater than any lovers’ past.

“Yeah.” She would not say thank you. “This was not a victory.”

He let out a half laugh and shoved a hand into his short hair. Whenever he’d met with the Senatus during that week they’d spent together, he’d arrived around the bonfire carefully groomed. Even when he’d come to “rescue” her in Colorado, wearing full-on soldier gear and a scowl, he’d looked like a million dollars. Now, with that vest pulled over his bare chest, sweat and rain and streaks of dirt making lines across his olive skin, his hair poking up at overlapping angles . . . he looked like a billion.

“Never claimed any victory,” he said. “You just looked thirsty.”

She glanced in the direction of where she believed the Queen’s prayer to be hidden. “I’m going now.”

Lips pursed, hands coming to those slim hips, he nodded. “And I’m following.”

She released a growl of frustration to the billowing sky.

“You know I will, Keko.”

Yes, she did know. Her panic was a living thing now, swimming throughout her body, slashing at her gut, pulling out her worry. Griffin
couldn’t
follow her. She couldn’t risk him ever finding out about the Chimeran disease, not when he was shadowboxing, looking for the perfect way into the Senatus. Not when it put her people at a serious disadvantage against his.

She couldn’t risk being this close to him again, not when her heart and soul were so raw, when she was at her lowest point.

But . . . this was her land. Maybe if she let him get a little closer—if she let him think she’d given in, that she was softening to him, willing to be swayed—he’d get sloppy. Then she’d lose him so fast he’d never be able to track her.

She tightened the strap of her pack that ran diagonally between her breasts. “I’m not slowing down for you.”

“Don’t expect you to.”

And then he smiled.

 • • • 

Griffin woke up because of the warmth on his face. When he’d fallen asleep stretched out on the wet grass, legs crossed at the ankles, hands tucked into his armpits, he’d been cold but determined to suck it up. Unwilling to give Keko any sort of ammunition against him.

As his eyes cracked open, he stared into the dancing flames of a small fire built only a few feet away. Its heat coated his pebbled skin and he resisted groaning in relief. On the other side of the fire, just beyond its circle of light, was Keko.

She sat on her heels, her back to him, head bowed toward the hands in her lap. Perfectly still. The fire and her presence confused him.

She easily could have taken off while he slept. She’d been the first to fall into sleep, her body tucked into a nest of tree roots, curled away from his sight. Only when he knew she was out did he let himself rest, knowing he could wake himself up after a few hours. And here she still was.

Silently, he came up to his elbows.

She hadn’t spoken to him all day as she’d set a blistering pace northwest toward the coast. But then, he hadn’t asked anything of her, just stared at her back, trying to figure her out. They’d stopped when the light died.

Now he looked at her back again, only under entirely different circumstances. It was quiet here, calm. Every now and then the fire would flare, sending light to graze her back in a loving stroke. Her white tank top was one of those that looped around her neck, exposing her defined delts and lats. Her long black hair was pulled over one shoulder. She wore jean shorts that made her ass look like a denim-covered heart. The shape of her, motionless for once, was intoxicating.

The way the firelight played across her skin made him think that he could see the magic inside her.

She was whispering something, the hush of it mixing with the breeze. It was another language, spoken so softly, and in a gentle tone that he’d never associated with Kekona Kalani. He longed for Gwen to sit at his side and translate for him. Just as quickly he changed his mind, because this moment of solemnity and peace was so unique and mesmerizing that he wanted to enjoy it for what it was. The puzzle was part of the appeal.

The whispers stopped. Keko’s head lifted slightly, her gaze going into the trees and brush.

“Thank you,” he said.

She didn’t jump, which told him she’d likely already known he was awake. Her hands slid to the ground near her hips and she looked over her shoulder at him, her hair swinging in shadow, nearly touching her waist.

“For the fire,” he clarified.

“You were shivering.” Flat tone, flat eyes.

He wasn’t fooled by her act of generosity. She would still try to lose him. She’d make him think she was acquiescing by having him tag along, maybe even try to seduce him so he’d nearly die from orgasm, go all moony-eyed, and then she’d disappear. He knew those games and wouldn’t fall for them. But he didn’t have Adine’s little toy anymore, and he had to keep her as close as possible for as long as possible. Let her think him dumb and malleable, if in the end it gave him an advantage. If it allowed him to keep a close eye on her.

She slid her legs out from under her body and sat perpendicular to the fire, hands wrapped around her knees. Great stars, her legs were long, that caramel skin such a gorgeous color.

“What were you doing?” he asked.

“Praying.”

He didn’t know what surprised him more. The fact she’d answered so quickly, or the nature of her answer itself. “To whom?”

She looked confused. “The Queen. Of course.”

He sat fully up. “The Queen who died when she found the Source. She became a deity after that.”

Her eyes narrowed, her face just above the tips of the flames between them. “Yes.”

“So what do you pray for?”

Keko answered slowly. “What people usually do. What do you pray for, Griffin?”

He sat cross-legged. “I don’t. We don’t. Ofarians give thanks and pay homage to the stars twice a year, but we don’t have a god or goddess that looks out for us. We don’t have religion.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Huh?”

“What you just described. It’s religion. You believe the stars gave you your magic, right?”

He swept a long, arching look across the sky that was slathered with twinkling lights. “Not exactly. Ofarians came from somewhere out there, somewhere else in the universe. Our magic came from our home world, but it’s the stars we can see as we stand here on Earth. So it’s the stars we acknowledge.”

“You have rituals? Things you do and words you say that you believe make you stronger?”

“Yes.”

Her hands left her knees and slapped lightly back down. “It’s religion. Yours is less tangible, but no less a faith.”

Now this was getting interesting. “Less tangible?”

“Well, yeah. You worship something that doesn’t actually give you power, but a substitute.”

“We don’t ‘worship’ the stars.”

She acted like she hadn’t heard him. “But we worship the woman who gathered all the Chimerans together from all across Polynesia and New Zealand and Southeast Asia. She dreamed of the ‘land of raging fire’ and took us across the sea to find the wellspring of our power. Here. We owe her everything. She was real.” Another light slap to her knees. “Tangible.”

“Huh. I’m not sure I follow you.”

She flicked her eyes skyward. “We came from up there, too, you know.”

Griffin couldn’t hide his surprise. “No. I didn’t know.” Still such little knowledge about the other elemental Secondaries. Did it frustrate the other races as much as it frustrated him?

Pulling all her hair into one hand, she started to braid it. “In a meteor shower, the story goes. There was something in what came through the atmosphere, something that affected portions of the population in the South Pacific. Something that mixed with the fire magic that was already present in the Source, and it changed some of the people.”

Absolutely fascinating, but Griffin couldn’t find his tongue to tell her so.

Now Keko swung her legs around, too, sitting tall on her hips, her white tank top nearly glowing in the night. “That’s what the Queen did. She found all of us, scattered over hundreds of places and islands, and brought us together. Taught us how to use our magic. She only wanted what’s best for her kind. It’s why she searched for the Source in the first place, to make us all stronger.” Keko licked her lips. “It’s why I’ve asked her to bless my purpose now.”

“And that purpose is . . . ?”

She almost answered. Almost. Keko opened her mouth, took a short breath, then changed her mind, lips pressing shut.

“You want to be a goddess,” Griffin said.

Keko’s eyes glittered like black diamonds. “No.”

“But you want to lead.”

“You know I do.”

With a hard pang he realized this was the easiest they’d spoken in three years, since the final time they’d been alone in that hotel room. Easiest, but also the hardest, because so much of what he’d told her was lies.

Every time she brought up the Senatus and he had to deny its involvement, he felt an invisible knife gouge into his heart. And every time he had to pluck that knife out and ignore the doubt and pain welling in its place, because Keko’s life and safety—and the protection of the Source—was worth more than the truth at this point. He would deal with the truth later. When she could listen and actually
hear
it.

Picking up a stick, he poked at the fire. It flared more than his poking warranted, and when he glanced up he saw the flames reflected in her penetrating eyes.

“So your Queen brought all the Chimerans to these islands. Did they make the great migration with the Primaries, when the other cultures settled here?”

Another burst from the fire, this time without him touching it at all. “Someone read the tourist brochure.”

He rolled his eyes. “Is that how it happened? Did you cross the ocean with them?”

Again she lifted her eyes to the stars, as though consulting the objects he still wouldn’t name as deity, no matter what she said.

“Is it some sort of secret?” he pressed.

She lowered her chin. Met his eyes. And it took all his strength not to react to the intensity of her direct look, not to let her see the shiver that shook his spine.

“No. I guess not,” she said. “No orders or
kapu
or anything like that.”

“So . . .”

She fidgeted with something on the ground, shot a blank look into the shadows, looked anywhere but at him. “So, yes. We came over with the Primaries.”

Holy shit. He couldn’t hide his excitement. “You were at one time integrated with them. Lived together.”

“That’s what the tales say, yeah.”

“What happened?”

“What do you think happened? When we came here, so close to the Source, our magic increased. The Queen became more powerful. We scared them and separated ourselves.”

It was a different time then, he told himself.

“They made up stories about us. How we lived in volcanoes and made them spew ash and fire. How we demanded sacrifices. How we held power over the common people.”

“Sounds a lot like some of the Hawaiian folktales.” Yeah, he’d read the tourist brochures, and anything else on old Hawaii he could get his hands on, once he learned where Keko lived.

She looked half amused and half annoyed. “Or maybe the folktales sound like Chimeran history. Stories and legends are usually made up to try to explain real things that you don’t understand.”

“True.” He frowned in thought. “So explain the Chimeran name. Isn’t that Greek?”

She shrugged. “We didn’t call ourselves that. The air elementals gave us that name a long, long time ago, and it stuck.”

“Ah.” He poked at the fire some more, glancing up now and then to see her face through the flames. The wood was wet, but that didn’t matter when a Chimeran controlled the blaze. “You’ve been separate from Primaries all this time?”

She bobbed her head from side to side. “Not entirely. Here and there some women have left the valley—if they’re runners or lookouts or something—and came back pregnant. My grandma was one of them. Japanese athlete, she said. She was sent to the Common House for breaking
kapu
.”

Some blood intermingling in her history and she was still as powerful as the rest of her clan. Interesting.

“The Chimerans seem to have held on to a lot of the old ways,” he noted.

Her brow wrinkled. “We’ve had to, being isolated like we are.”

He considered her. “Do you agree with that?”

Her bottom lip partly disappeared as she chewed it. “Are you trying to politic me? Out here after you chased me down?”

He sighed. “Just trying to learn about you. Just trying to understand.”

“We are who we are, who we’ve always been. And this is how we’ll always be.”

I wasn’t talking about the others, he wanted to say, but didn’t.

“This status code,” he said, “this thing Chimerans have about ranking yourselves through fighting and physical proof, has it always been like that?”

Her back stiffened. “I get what you’re doing.”

“And what is that?”

“Trying to get me to question my own culture. You’re still trying to stop me from going after the Source, only this time with words.”

No point in denying that. He changed tactics. “So the old ways, way back when you lived with the Primaries, were based on this system of learning how to fight, and then climbing the ranks?”

She started to rip out her braid, fingers like claws scraping through the black strands. “No, that was the Queen’s idea. For the Primaries, for the ancient Hawaiians, once you were born into a class you couldn’t ever move out of it. She didn’t like that. When she divided us from the humans, she changed the rules.”