Drowning in Fire

by Hanna Martine

  Griffin pushed aside another fern frond and showed himself. “It’s me,” he said, echoing the simple declaration she’d given him just days ago on the phone. “Just me.”

  A terrible pause, filled with silence and the consistent, pleasurable thrum of her signature. He’d never forgotten its song, the way it meshed so well with his mind. Even when he’d come upon her as a captive in that garage, even when she’d been flaring with rage, he’d been unable to deny how the thing she couldn’t even feel herself affected him. It was a layer of connection between them that she’d never truly understand.

  Even across the ravine he could almost hear her mind working, considering, questioning, weighing what to do, how to respond.

  “Use your fire as light,” he said. “I’ll prove it.”

  Another pause, and inside it he feared she’d run. Then he heard her draw a breath—a Chimeran breath, the kind he so vividly remembered Makaha taking—and a gorgeous stream of sunset gold fire spouted from her lips, arcing up and over the ravine, drawing a hot, crackling, radiant line between them. Her mouth closed but the firelight remained, and in that brief moment he witnessed a world of emotion cross that beautiful face he hadn’t seen in two months.

  Disbelief and joy. Distress and relief. Resolution and doubt. Then shock. Then fear. Then a clench of her jaw and a narrowing of those lava black eyes, and a reappearance of that anger he knew so well.

  She always managed to send him tilting.

  Griffin stood his ground, the rainbow of fire hitting its apex and starting to come down right for him. This flame arrow could easily kill him. He had no water magic left to fight it. No strength left with which to dodge it. He had nothing but his own courage, his own purpose. He had to believe that Keko, whose people valued physical strength and bravery above all, would not kill a person in such a way.

  The fire’s heat slicked over his skin, getting closer and closer. He took his own deep breath, standing tall, staring across the void at Keko. Those fathomless eyes, as dark as the deepest part of the ocean, pierced him.

  The fire died. Sputtered out mere feet above his head.

  Something else charged through the twilight between them. Something old and familiar. Something he’d missed terribly.

  He opened his arms. “It’s just me, Keko.”

  It had been only a second of darkness, and he already ached for the vision of her face.

  “How’d you find me?”

  “I’m Ofarian.”

  She let out a sound of derision that carried effortlessly through the quiet Hawaiian landscape. “Goddamn bloodhound. Forgot about that.”

  He doubted that.

  “You should be at the Senatus gathering.” He remembered that tone of voice from the garage. The low one, the threatening one. The one that made clear she wouldn’t be anyone’s prey.

  So that was it, why she’d followed the Queen’s footsteps at this particular time. She’d thought the chief would be gone at the Senatus and wouldn’t find her note until he returned. And she never, ever expected Griffin to get involved.

  “I was,” he said. “Chief and Bane told me you’d disappeared.”

  Even in the silent darkness, her surprise was evident. “What did they say?”

  “Give me some more fire. I want to see your face.”

  She laughed. “Not a chance.”

  “You know it’s just me.”

  Tiny, twin flashes of flame sparked and died, and he knew it was annoyance manifesting in her eyes, but that was the extent of light she gave him. “What. Did. They. Say.”

  He knew what he could tell her, and what he shouldn’t. He knew what might make her pause, and what would send her sprinting in the opposite direction so fast he’d never have a prayer of catching up.

  He said, “They told me, in secret, about the Fire Source. That you were going after it.”

  It took her a long, long time to answer. “Did they say why?”

  “They didn’t have to. Once they told me the story of your Queen, I figured it out.”

  He hoped that was cryptic enough to satisfy. She didn’t supply any more.

  “Why are you here, Griffin?”

  “I’m going to sit. I’m not going anywhere. Don’t run, okay?” He let his knees give out, let his ass hit the dirt. His body released a grateful sigh. If she were to run, this would be the perfect opportunity.

  “Why are you here?” she asked again.

  “When Chief and Bane told me you’d gone,” he slowly replied, thinking through every word, “I knew they wanted me to go after you. To bring you back.”

  She laughed again, and it sounded like sorrow.

  “Let me finish. Chief wants me to bring you back because he doesn’t want you to find the Source and rise above him. Bane wants me to find you because you’re his sister and he’s worried. Your fucking clan laws won’t allow him to go after you himself.”

  It was the truth. At least part of it. The part she might actually buy. There was so much more—and so much he didn’t understand himself—but dumping it on her at once was the absolute wrong way to go, not when she was poised to take off from the starting blocks and he was exhausted. He couldn’t mention the Senatus’s demands. He couldn’t even mention what Aya had told him about the Source’s danger. She would despise the first and scoff at the second, thinking that Aya’s warning was just a ploy to get her to back off.

  He added, “But that’s not why I came.”

  She still hadn’t moved, her body a dimly lit statue at the lip of the ravine. “So tell me.”

  The stars were incredible out here, he thought, then realized that he couldn’t be sure if the stars he saw were actually those in the sky or the ones sparkling at the edges of his vision.

  “I came for you.” Fatigue had a way of pulling out the truth.

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “You don’t deserve this end. Throwing yourself into the Source in the hopes that it might give you a name after your death. It’s fucking stupid, Keko. I’m just going to say it.”

  “And what if that name is ‘Queen’?”

  “Pride is internal. So is strength. Everything else is bullshit.”

  “You’re such a fucking boy scout, such an Ofarian, always thinking you know what’s best for everyone else. You’re not Chimeran. You couldn’t possibly understand.”

  “I understand you want to lead. Remember when you told me that? I understand that your one dream is gone, and you think this is the only way to get it back.”

  “You don’t know anything.” It came out sounding sad and detached, which was unnervingly like how she’d sounded when she called him. “Because you were given what you never really wanted. You were just handed my dreams.”

  Ah, now he got it. She was resentful over what he’d told her in the Utah hotel room about how he’d reluctantly taken the Ofarian leadership.

  “That would never appeal to you, though,” he said, “just being given something that big. It’s not in your blood. You’d still find something to fight for. But this . . . this”—he waved a hand around the ravine—“is not worth it.”

  “You are fighting, too. Don’t tell me you aren’t. All that stuff you told me about, the class system and such, how much you love your people. That’s why you want the Senatus—”

  She cut herself off and the warm Hawaiian night suddenly went frigid.

  “That’s it. The Senatus sent you to stop me.”

  “No.” The denial came too easily.

  “Don’t fucking lie to me. You have some sort of deal with them, don’t you?”

  This was going south, fast. To admit to that would only lose her. In more ways than one. To deny it would at least buy him some more time. And that’s exactly what he needed.

  “You’re wrong, Keko. I’m here because I want you on this Earth. I’m here because ther
e are ways other than dying to get what you want.”

  She said nothing, but he knew she still didn’t believe him. Suddenly he was grateful she’d refused him any more light, because he couldn’t be certain what his face showed.

  “You know why I think you called me?” he asked softly, his voice easily carrying.

  “Enlighten me.”

  “I think it was your way of asking for help.”

  “Ha!”

  “You’ve never had to ask anyone for help in your entire life. You don’t even know how. But you were lost and sad and you knew I would come for you if I thought you needed me.”

  “I don’t need you.”

  He could have imagined it, but her voice tripped over the word “need.”

  “No, maybe you don’t need me. But deep down, you’re glad I’m here. You’re relieved your phone call worked.”

  She started to back away and his stomach sank. He tried to find his feet but his strength wouldn’t let him.

  “You’re not going to catch me.” She toed farther away from the ravine edge, her dusky skin melding with the darkness. “You’re not going to stop me. This is my name. This is my fight.”

  “Keko—”

  Then she turned and ran into the night forest. No amount of calling out brought her back.

  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.