I moved my fingers down to the dark, almost circular, mark on the lower plane of his back. “And this?”
“Gun shot. Different night. Same club. Hurt like hell.”
“Sounds like you shouldn’t spend so much time in nightclubs.”
“It was my job. I worked security for clubs for two years. Knives and guns were an occupational hazard. I always carry a knife on me now.”
I was surprised. “But you’re so young. How could they let a kid work security at a club?”
He turned to face me with a wry, joyless smile. “I haven’t been a kid for a very long time. Can’t you tell?”
He was standing too close to me now. And it made me uneasy. Don’t be stupid, Leila. You can fry him with a thought. He’s got nothing for you to be scared of. I tore my gaze from his and chose a scattering of pebbled scars on his chest, just below his neck. “What about these?”
They seemed insignificant in the face of the war field that was his torso – but he shifted uncomfortably. He didn’t want to answer me. “Cigarette burns.”
I flinched at that. “Ouch. How did you get those? They must have been really deep to leave scars like that.”
The walls had gone up in his eyes. “You meet a lot of nuts in foster homes. I was young. I wouldn’t let anybody do that to me now.”
The unspoken threat sent a shiver down my spine. I could tell he wanted me to change the subject, move on to a new set of scars, but I wasn’t going to be scared off. I stared into his eyes, daring him to tell me the truth. “How old were you?”
Challenge issued and answered. “Nine.” I was appalled. But I hid it, pointed to another stitched mark on his abdomen. “This one?”
He caught my hand in his. “Hold up. No fair. If we’re sharing secrets here then you should at least trade me some of yours. This body is basically an open book. How about you, Leila?”
He was still holding my hand, cradling it against his midriff and I wanted to snatch it away to safety. Away from the hot wetness of his skin. Sweat. Steam. Fire. “What about me?”
His gaze burned me. “What secrets are you going to share?”
“I don’t have any. Boring spoilt rich girl, right here. No secrets.” I fought – and failed – to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
He raised the eyebrow at me. “In that case, you won’t have a problem with answering my questions. We’ll trade information.”
“Fine.” I pulled my fingers away from his and went back to studying his scar map. I pointed to a rough patch of skin on his shoulder. “This one.”
“Dirt bike crash. Abrasion.”
A discoloration above his hipbone. “That one.”
“No way.” He shook his head. “It’s your turn to reveal something.”
“Okay. What do you want to know?”
“How old were you when you first started setting stuff on fire?” His question caught me off guard. I guess I expected something else. I looked at him but he was all serious intent. He really wanted to know.
“It didn’t start until recently. Last year. Just after I moved here.”
“How did it start? Did it just explode out of you one day?”
“No. It was a gradual thing. I was getting these heat attacks, temperature spikes, awful dreams. One night there were singe marks on my sheets. But no fire, no exploding until …” I came to a halt, embarrassed.
“Until what? Go on.” Keahi was hanging onto my every word, so eager for my answer that it was a little scary.
I took a deep breath and tried to be careless and nonchalant. “Daniel and I were kissing. It was my first time – kissing – and things got very hot and then I kinda exploded. It’s just lucky that Daniel didn’t get hurt.”
He had a distant look in his eye. “Yeah. Lucky.” His body had gone all tense again. I was standing so close to him that I could feel that invisible wire of strain twisting tighter and tighter.
“Hey, so I answered your question. Now, back to explaining the war wounds.” I was skirting around the obvious and instead, pointed to his scarred eyebrow. “That one’s my favorite. Where did you get that?”
His eyes crinkled into a smile. “From my sister.”
In that instant, there was a happy, carefree expression on his face, so much so that he almost looked like a different person. Aha, I had discovered something important. Keahi had a sister. And he loved her very much. Enough to distract him from being the usual antagonistic boy who radiated raw energy and anger. I pounced on this new insight. “You have a sister?”
“I did. She’s dead.”
Ouch. I was wrong. This was not a happy topic at all. “I’m sorry.” He was back in his moody place but I wouldn’t let him stay there alone. “What was her name?”
“Mailani. She was my twin.”
I caught my breath, eyes wide at this revelation. There was nothing else he could have revealed that would have hit me with more incisive impact. Keahi had been part of a perfect whole. He had been a twin. Like me.
He continued, oblivious to my surprise. Raising a hand to his jagged arched eyebrow. “She gave me this. We were seven. She had this stuffed toy that she took everywhere with her. A blue whale. She loved that thing so bad. I stole it off her and threatened to drown it in the toilet. Get it, drown it?” He laughed softly at his own lame joke. “I was holding it over the bowl, telling her ‘I’m gonna flush! Say goodbye to Baby Whale!’ and she was screaming at me to stop. Then she grabbed a glass paperweight and threw it at me. She had terrible aim. I should have stood still. But I ducked and so the paperweight hit me right on the face. The glass shattered just over my eye. I needed fourteen stitches. I was lucky not to lose my eye.” He laughed. “She felt soooo bad. She stayed with me the whole time at the hospital, kept crying and asking me to forgive her. She even told the doctors that she could donate her eye to me. You can take my eye. Please give him mine. I can wear a pirate patch. I don’t mind. Even though it was totally my fault for messing with her, she took the blame for it all.” He stopped and gave me a sad smile. “We did that a lot. Looked out for each other. She was my best friend.” We were both silent for a moment.
I hit him with another question while he was in a confessional mood. “Why did you stay in Samoa after the regatta finished?”
“Because of what happened that night when I touched you. And afterwards, when you argued with your boyfriend? That fire thing?” He took a deep breath and said simply, “I stayed in Samoa because of you. My turn, where does your fire come from?”
“From earth. I’m what Samoans call telesā. The palagi would call me an elemental. I can channel the energy in the ground into heat and fire. Tap into magma. Talk to volcanoes. Summon earthquakes. That’s all.”
“Oh, that’s all, huh? Nothing too flash.”
“I told you what I am, now trade me a battlefield secret.”
“A what?”
I gestured at his body. “You know, your war wounds.”
He smiled. And that dangerous glint was in his eyes again. “So my body is a battlefield? Well, it’s certainly seen a lot of action.”
I rolled my eyes at his crude joke. “Whatever. Your burns. The ones all over you. The ones you’re hiding under those tattoos. What happened to you?”
I had saved the worst for last and his body tensed as he answered me. “I was in a fire when I was eight years old. The apartment block we were living in burned to the ground. I had second- and third-degree burns to a lot of my body. I was in a burn unit for a long time. Had lots of skin grafts. Some plastic surgery. Most girls run screaming from the room when I take my shirt off.”
A rush of gratitude filled me. Keahi had entrusted me with a piece of himself and I had a feeling that he didn’t do that very often. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For not lying to me.” I gestured to the burn scarring. “I forget how deadly fire can be. How much pain it can inflict. When I flame, it always makes me feel so happy. Complete. Sometimes it’s a struggle to stay
in control of it and not give in to its destructive force.” I asked the question that I had been puzzling over ever since the night at the regatta. “Have you ever flamed?”
There was a long pause taut with tension. Like we both stood on the edge of a cliff that called for us to jump. And then Keahi made his choice. “I’ve flamed only once. I’m the one who set fire to our apartment. I killed the man who was trying to rape my sister. I killed our mother, the woman who sold us to him for the night for twenty dollars. And I killed my sister. The only person who ever meant anything to me. I’ve been surviving on hate ever since.”
A shock wave rolled me in its airless grip. Tumbling and battering at my every thought as I tried to process this revelation. “I’m sorry.” I sounded like a broken record. Sorry was such an inconsequential word.
Keahi shrugged. “Don’t be. I don’t need your pity. Hate is a useful drug. It’s what made sure I survived the foster system. It’s what drove me to the local muay thai gym and kept me fighting in the ring and on the street. Hate is my best friend.”
“The fire thing has never happened to you again since then?”
He shook his head. “Nothing even close. I woke up in the hospital and thought maybe I had imagined it all. Never had any more fire episodes after that. Not until the other night outside the club. Not until you. My tattoos lighting up like that? That red glow? I’ve never had that happen before. And then later when I followed you and saw what you did after Daniel left the beach? You threw a ball of fire at the ocean.” He paused to stare into my eyes and this time there was something more than anger in them. Curiosity? Hope? Fascination? “You can do things with fire. Controlled things. Are we the same? Am I telesā? Can I learn how to control it like you can?”
My words were whispered. “I don’t know. I’m new to this. I didn’t know there were telesā in Hawaii but I guess it makes sense. There’s a telesā Covenant in Tonga and there used to be one here, so why wouldn’t there be telesā in Hawaii?”
“Can you teach me? Show me how to do what you do with the fire?”
“I guess. I’ve never taught anybody. My mother Nafanua was my teacher. But she’s gone now.And even if she were alive, there’s no way in flaming hell that she would help you.” A wry laugh that had no humor in it. “Male telesā are an abomination so the women kill them. I was a twin too and my brother was Gifted with ocean so she killed him. You’re lucky you weren’t born to a telesā mother.”
His reply was harsh, “There’s nothing lucky about the mother I had.”
Ouch. Stupid use of words. I tried to fix it. “You’re right. You got a pretty raw deal where mothers are concerned.”
He accepted the peace words and offered some of his own. “I guess we both lucked out with mothers.” And then the impossible happened. We were both smiling at each other. We had found common ground at last. Bad mothers. “I’m sorry about what I said the other day. I guess maybe you aren’t such a spoilt brat after all.”
I laughed. “You say that like you have a bad taste in your mouth. You don’t say sorry very often, do you?”
He laughed with me. “I do too. I apologized to you at the regatta night. You’re just not very good at accepting apologies.”
I did my best Simone fake-offended face, “Excuse me? Your apology sucked. You showed me your abs, like they were supposed to be your ‘get out of jail free’ card. You call that an apology? It was offensive.”
A lazy shrug, a hand rubbed over his ridged sides, “What can I say? Magic abs. They always worked for me before.”
Pointedly, I ignored the abs, which were getting far too much air time and instead stuck my hand out. “I’m calling a truce. I’ll stop hating you if you stop provoking me on purpose.”
He took my hand in his. Held it long enough for our connection to ignite, sending a bolt of pure energy rippling through me. I tried to pull away but he wouldn’t release me. “Truce. And you’ll teach me how to control these powers and use them?”
“I’ll try.” I focused on the flare of power surging through me, directed it, and smiled in satisfaction when Keahi jerked his hand from mine and stumbled backwards.
“Ow! That hurt.” He stared at me accusingly.
Over his shoulder I saw Teuila walking across the lawn towards us. “Your student is on her way over here. You better get ready.” I warned him before leaning forward to whisper, “Maybe if you’re nice to me, I’ll teach you that little zap trick in your first fire lesson.”
I expected a glare but got a wicked smile instead. “So we’re friends then? My apology worked.” He flexed, lifting his arms so he could slowly run his hands over his head, angling his body to better catch the light. Classic body builder pose. He pointed downwards in the general direction of the fabled six-pack and mouthed the words at me, “It’s the magic abs. They work every time.”
Magic abs, my ass is what I wanted to say – but Teuila had arrived and I was trying to set a good example for the youth of today. So I went to punch the stuffing out of a workout bag.
And tried not to think about abs.
Teaching Keahi was much harder than I thought it would be. I took him up to the deserted quarry at Aleisa, the best place for setting people on fire. But unlike me, Keahi couldn’t – or wouldn’t –flame. Not completely anyway. His fire was an uncontrollable, chaotic thing that erupted from him in flashes. A scattering of sparks from his fingertips. A line of fire that abruptly seared from his chest. Erratic flickers of red heat that refused to be directed or channeled. But even more strange, it was a fire that he could only summon when we were in skin contact. Standing alone, he couldn’t even generate a glimmer of fire, but if I held his hand, then it would burst from him. Wild. Untamed.
“Dammit, Keahi. Focus. You have to clear your mind of everything and feel for fanua afi deep beneath your feet. Listen for her. Let her speak to you and through you. Again.”
“I’m trying” he shot back at me through clenched teeth as he stood in the midst of grey stone and tried to make something fiery happen on his own. Nothing. He cursed. Loud and frustrated. Picked up a handful of gravel and threw it at the quarry wall.
“Well, that’s mature.” I didn’t bother trying to keep the derision from my voice. We had been at it for two hours now and I was hot, bothered, and regretting ever agreeing to do this. “Look, maybe you’re not meant to manipulate fire the way I do. Maybe sparks are all you’re ever going to make.”
He snarled, “Or maybe you just need to be a better teacher and give me more.”
Before I could react, he ripped off the remnants of his singlet, walked to me, grabbed my hand, twisted and pulled me into a restraining lock. Body pressed against my back, one arm held me in a chokehold, the other locked my hand at my back. It all happened so fast that I was caught by surprise. He spoke and his breath was hot in my ear, “Now, fire goddess let’s see if I can make more than sparks.”
“Let me go.” I struggled. Kicked. Fought. Against his heat. Sweat. Skin. Smell. But he had me well locked. Pain knifed me as I tried to free myself. “You’re hurting me. This isn’t funny.” I couldn’t breathe properly in his choking embrace. Rising panic choked me, with it came rage. And with rage, came fire.
Keahi felt it. He laughed as I strained against him. As together we both burst into flame. He released me then, to raise his hands to the sky in wonder. Delight. Amazement. I stumbled away from him, turned and let loose. “You animal!” I ripped a ball of pulsing fire from the air and threw it at him. It hit him square in the chest, lifting him off his feet, throwing him ten meters back, slamming him into the rock face. If he had been flesh and blood, every bone in his body would have shattered.
But he was magma. Fire. And so he picked himself up slowly, shaking his head and still with that mocking laughter. “Well, that’s mature.” He didn’t have a chance to say anything else before I hit him, again and again, with a volley of incendiary spheres. The force of each one pushed him back a little more until he was pinned against stone. He call
ed out, “You got me. Now what are you going to do with me?”
Every fiery piece of me throbbed with fury. I wanted to detonate the entire quarry and wipe him from the planet but I didn’t think that would work. Not against a telesā fanua afi. I heaved one more cannonball of power at him and spat, “I was trying to help you. How could you do that to me?”
“What? It worked didn’t it? We came out here so you could show me how to flame like you and we found out what works.” He shook himself free and walked to stand in front of me, two beings of liquid fire, face to face. Who knew when such a thing had last occurred in the entire history of telesā? Staring at someone who was just like me was a disconcerting thing. Keahi reached to caress my cheek with fire. “This is what works. You and me. Us, together.”
I hit his hand away. “There is no us. We are not together. I was willing to help you, but not anymore. You can’t hurt people like that and expect them to still be your friend.”
“I will do whatever it takes to control this fire thing. I’ve seen what it can do and I will make it mine.”
“You’ll have to do it without me then.” And then I tried something I had never done before. I spoke to the flow of energy that linked Keahi to fanua afi and called it to me, summoning his fire, effectively switching his off. It wasn’t difficult, because his control on it was so tenuous. Weak. His fire left. Leaving him standing there in flesh form. And very naked.
He looked down and then back at me, incredulous. “What happened? What did you do?”
To his credit, he didn’t even seem bothered that all of Aleisa forest could now see more than just his magic abs. “You turned it off somehow. Nice one.” A shrug and he moved towards me, “But not a problem, we can just flick the switch again.”
“No, we can’t.” I threw a whip wire of flame that held him at bay. He leapt back. “Hey!”
I ran to my Jeep, sheltered on the opposite side of it and quickly extinguished my flames, grabbed the lavalava I always carried in the back seat and wrapped it around myself. I was in the driver’s seat and had the engine revved before he even realized what was happening.
When Water Burns Page 20
