Soon, after her evolution was complete, she wouldn’t be able to just appear here, where she valued the pristine natural beauty and the utter solitude. She would have to take an airplane, and then a train, and then a ferry. She’d have to drive a car to find this general area, and then hike on her two feet to this very specific place.
She wondered if she would actually ever do that, or if this spot would become nothing more than a wish and a memory. For now, however, she would keep these moments of freedom and sparse sun and clean air.
The ground suddenly rumbled and she lost her balance. One arm shot out to grab at the limestone, and her fingers shifted form to meld with the stone and keep her from pitching over the edge into the water below. She held fast, her head swiveling to her left, toward the source of the rumbling.
Six feet away, the cliff face bulged outward. A gray, blocky leg kicked free, a heavy limestone foot coming down. A second leg followed. Then a torso peeled away, making the new arrival at least a foot taller than she was. The arms were the last to form, thicker than hers, decidedly masculine.
Nem’s human body came to him extremely quickly, and when his facial features smoothed out they retained none of the strain Aya now carried after her transformation. His skin didn’t have a more natural hue yet, still desperately clinging to the burnished silver-gray from which he’d just emerged. His hair made high, faint tinkling sounds as the shining white strands brushed together in the wind. It would be a year or so before he appeared human enough to walk among them. He had, after all, only recently chosen to evolve.
Nem looked down at himself, watching his human body fill out its shape with an equal mix of curiosity, awe, and disapproval. The last thing to fully transform was his right arm. It shifted from stone to plant, the length of it a thick green stem, his palm the great black circle forming the center of a sunflower. Long, delicate yellow petals shot out from his palm. Then the wind grabbed and ripped free those petals, leaving only five, which became his fingers.
A sunflower petal tore off and slapped against the cliff face, becoming lodged in a crevice. The others whipped away to Aran Island places unknown or to bob on the undulating waves below.
Nem flexed his new fingers, making a concerned face at the stiff movements.
“You still do that?” she asked, releasing her rock hand from the limestone. “With the sunflower?”
“It helps the transition,” he replied, flipping gold and silver eyes up to hers. “It keeps me calm. It releases some doubt.”
She sighed, her eyes briefly closing. “I didn’t ask you to choose evolution.”
He looked bewildered, but since he’d only just started to experience basic human emotions, he wouldn’t even understand what he was feeling while in this body. Not for a while yet. “But we’re to be mated.”
“We were to be mated. That was before I made my choice.”
He frowned at the arm that had been the sunflower. One finger pressed to the bare skin on his chest, then slid down over his belly. She’d done that, too, back in the beginning. Back when her body was new and strange.
Not having control over his emotions yet made them all readily available and apparent, playing in vibrant color across his face. “I evolved to have you. I did this so that our Son or Daughter would have our combined strength and guard the Source after I am human.”
“I can’t give you an heir anymore. I’m too far along for that. My body can no longer carry a Child of Earth.” And until their bodies were fully compatible again—human to human, not human to Child—mating was out of the question. She was secretly glad for the time and space that disconnect would put between them, because now that she was more human than Child, she was beginning to understand what it meant to want someone else for something other than mating.
“The Source needs a guardian after my evolution.” His voice was rising, his frustration growing, his confusion and inability to fully understand the differences between the worlds heightening the stress of everything.
“Then you need to find another Daughter as mate. Quickly.”
To Aya, the whole thing was very sensible.
“But I want you!”
The sharp shout bounced off the rock behind her and came back to hit her in the ears a second time. She jumped. Instantly a look of horror crossed his face, followed by a tense gathering of the skin between his eyebrows.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I feel like that was inappropriate somehow.”
His fists uncoiled from where they’d gathered at his sides. The aggressive forward tilt of his torso pulled back. His wild eyes searched the ground at her feet.
Aya exhaled, admittedly a little scared, a little thrown. When she’d been at Nem’s stage, she remembered screaming in the confines of her home Within. Screaming so no other Child would hear. It was only when she went Aboveground that she didn’t have that panic or fear. That’s how she’d known she’d made the right choice. Nem, however . . .
He straightened his shoulders, calmed himself. “Why did you ask me to come here? It’s a long way from where I ought to be.”
She was grateful for the return to matters at hand. “I know, but I couldn’t go to Hawaii. If she saw me . . . if he sensed me . . .”
At Nem’s utterly confused look, she stepped closer, meaning only to comfort. She caught a glimpse of the magnificent-looking human he would become, and she stopped her advance, because that felt entirely wrong to think.
“The Source may be compromised,” she said.
Humanity escaped him. Just vanished. His skin crackled and went solid. Limestone pushed out of his skin, then he seemed to realize what had just happened and he snatched back the human form.
“You called me away from the Source to tell me this?” He started to twitch, to pace.
“As I said, I can’t go there. Too much is at risk.”
She told him everything that had happened at the Senatus—everything but her own agenda.
“You let her go after the Source.” His voice was very dark. “When you know what damage she could cause.”
Aya folded her hands in front of her, the short cloak of pebbles swinging around her body. “No. I made a strategic move to keep our position solid within the Senatus. I have every confidence in your ability to protect what your line has always kept safe.”
Please believe me, she silently begged.
Nem planted his hands on his hips. “Are you as confident in this Ofarian? That he’ll capture her before she finds it?”
Aya shrugged. “Does it matter? We have the advantage and the victor’s spoils, no matter the outcome.”
He started to shift on his feet and she knew he longed to dive back into the earth. Maybe he wouldn’t recognize what showed on his face just then, but she knew very well what it was.
Intent to harm. Murder.
She came forward to calm his frenetic movements with a hand to his arm. He stopped instantly, his eyes snapping to the place where they touched, human skin to human skin. The first time for him, likely. The second for her, after a brief moment of contact from Keko over a year ago. His dewy lips dropped open and he swayed on his feet. Aya removed her hand.
“I need you to promise me,” she said, “that you will not go after Keko before she reaches the Source.”
“What?”
“I need you to promise me that you will let this play out, that you will let Griffin do what he must do. If he fails, if Keko finds the Source, then she is yours, but not until then. I need your word. I need you to understand what I’m asking. That’s why I called you here.”
Nem inched away until his back struck the limestone. His skin started to shift on its own, silver-white cracks smearing over his shoulders and around his waist.
“You’ve changed,” he said.
“That’s what happens when you evolve.”
“I didn’t mean your b
ody.” As he said it, his gaze swept from her face, over her shoulders, and down her torso. His mouth slackened when he came to her breasts. His brow furrowed when his gaze skimmed over her bare legs and the covered junction between them.
She didn’t quite understand her revulsion, only that she didn’t care for this very human reaction from a man who wasn’t entirely one yet. It made her feel uncomfortable. Unwelcome. Unsafe.
She knew of human mating, how it was done, the physical aspects of it. But Nem knew nothing, only what his human body was telling him. She didn’t want that with him. Not one bit.
With a gasp, Nem glanced down at himself, down to the place between his own legs. Uncertainty twisted his features. Then anger. His head snapped up and he pinned her with a severe, glittering stare.
“I didn’t mean your body,” he repeated. “I meant your mind. What’s happened?”
She started to panic and desperately tried to maintain her composure. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He pulled himself away from the cliff with a hard clink of broken rock and a dusty shower of pebbles. “Is it that air elemental?”
Her stomach felt funny. “What?” And her voice sounded odd. Too breathy, too scared. Too out of her control.
Nem advanced another step, but she couldn’t back up or else she’d go over the cliff and into the waves. Oxygen dwindled, like she was trapped Within again.
“That’s what I thought,” he said, nodding.
Aya tried desperately to recover. “What air elemental? What are you talking about?”
“The new one the premier brought in recently to wipe the minds of humans. The man with the curly hair.”
The only way Nem could possibly know about that particular air elemental was if Nem had been in Canada last month when the premier had summoned Aya to his race’s compound.
Now it was her turn to advance, anger and fear roiling through her body. “You followed me? To a private meeting with the Senatus premier? The Father will have you locked Within—”
“You won’t tell him.” Nem’s voice dropped, and she’d never heard him sound so utterly human. “Because then I will tell him how you revealed yourself to the Senatus. How you compromised the secrecy of our entire race. I’ll bet you didn’t mention that part to the Father when you told him the rest. You made the mistake of telling me.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“And then I will tell him that once you become human, you will not be interested in mating with another human, but a Secondary, an air elemental. That, above anything, will see you trapped Within until you wither and die as flesh and not of earth. Alone.”
Aya’s entire body shook with a rage and frustration that was completely new to her human mind.
She tried to fight it, but that air elemental’s face stabbed into her vision. His haunted, distant pale blue eyes, the hair Nem described . . . She’d only seen him that once, over a month ago, but the memory taunted her with a need and want she didn’t know how to hide or react to.
She thought she knew this new world. She thought she knew how to live within it. A Son of Earth had proved her wrong.
“It seems,” Nem said, turning away and speaking to her over one broad shoulder, “that for once in our existence, we have reached a mutual understanding.”
He punched a fist into the limestone, half his arm instantly disappearing. Then he stepped through the cliff face, the earth swallowing him easily, gracefully, to return to the island place Aya could not go.
EIGHT
Hiking on three hours’ sleep. What rest Keko didn’t get was counterbalanced by the constant reminder that Griffin Aames was on her tail.
Griffin. Who had come to the Big Island to stop her.
Another shudder passed through her body, and it was like food or water, giving her energy. Nothing like a good, angry chase to push her onward.
Nothing like the knowledge that the Queen’s prayer was so close.
Her pace was slower than it had been yesterday, but it was still a good one. She was still moving. When she’d left him, Griffin had been absolutely wiped. Even in the darkness, even though he was trying his best to hide it, she’d seen the steep slant of his shoulders, and heard the wheeze and fatigue in his voice. He’d probably passed out on that ridge last night. But as soon as he woke up, he’d cross the ravine and hunt her all over again. She would be stupid to discount someone of his determination and focus.
She had to keep moving.
She ate the last of her granola bars as she trudged on. She was desperate for water, but she didn’t want to backtrack to the stream she’d crossed a few hours ago. Although backtracking could possibly throw Griffin off, her time and resources were running out. She would press on. She was fire, after all, and fire didn’t need water.
She hadn’t been fooled by anything Griffin said to her—did he really think she believed he was here for any reason other than the Senatus? For anyone but himself?
He, however, had been fooled by the chief.
It made sense Chief would send Griffin after her. If Keko did find the Source and survive, if she brought back the cure, she would be venerated above the Big Island ali’i and all the other island chiefs. She’d be above the Queen. Of course Chief wanted Keko stopped before that could happen. He had other Chimerans covering his weakened ass, after all, and could still live as he had been.
Griffin could go on thinking she was doing this solely for the glory. That was fine by her. He already thought her hotheaded and stubborn and brash. As long as he never knew the real reason. As long as he never found out about the wasting disease. The head Ofarian could never discover a weak link in the Chimeran race.
Bane, though . . . Bane’s motives puzzled her. Messed with her mind. Made her heart feel oddly tight.
There was no room in Chimeran society for familial ties once a person began challenging others to establish their place in the ranks. Bane and Keko had long since ceased being brother and sister, even before she’d ever beaten him for the title of general. So what the hell was he doing? Why would he ask Griffin to find her and bring her home safe? Unless Griffin had misread him.
Unless Griffin was lying. Again.
Both were possible. Neither changed her mind.
The ground was soft from rainfall this close to Hilo. It was pointless to try to keep dry. The damp just kept coming. She was starting to miss the scent of the air within the valley, the smoke and smell of the erupting Kilauea volcano that occasionally drifted to them.
Thick clouds pushed quickly inland, a line of clarity drawn just off the coast where it was tauntingly sunny and dry. She changed her route, finally angling toward the water. There, a little farther northwest on the Hamakua Coast, she would start to look for the geographical markers the Queen’s lover had described. She tried not to worry that the landscape had changed too much.
Movement behind her. A shuffle of leaves, a crack of branches. Small but noticeable, odd and out of place. She whirled.
A flash of dark in the distance. A man sliding behind a tree. Griffin.
She ran.
Didn’t matter how tired she was. Didn’t matter her tongue was sticking to the roof of her mouth. She ran, sprinting through the underbrush and around the hills. She ran, away from the man who would stop her from doing the one good thing in her life she was meant to do. She could hear him pursuing fast. He called her name more than once, and then all she heard was the pound of her bare feet on the uneven earth and the slap of her pack against her back.
She zigzagged, trying to throw him off. The curves around the hills were wide and she followed them left and right instead of taking a straight line that would show Griffin her path. It seemed to be working, because the sound of his pursuit died off. Her breath sawed in and out of her lungs. If she was tired, then she must have seriously worn down the Ofarian.
A few more sprinted
steps to prove she’d lost him, and then she finally slowed down. Finally let herself jog. A dormant volcano rose straight ahead, its cone shape now covered in green. She’d head that way and not stop running until night. It was in the opposite direction from where she needed to be, but tomorrow she’d veer back to the water and get her bearings. Tomorrow she’d—
A hard, giant something slammed into her from the right side.
She had no time to react. Just barely enough seconds to whip her head around to make out Griffin’s snarl so close to her face. Then his arms and legs clamped around her, snatching her feet from the ground and tossing her up and over his body. Together they sailed through the damp air.
She hit the dirt and bounced, rolling a little uphill, hitting a massive root, then tumbling back down. The momentum let her find her feet again, and she whirled to see Griffin also recovering from the impact, transforming his fall into a shoulder roll, and then popping into a crouch.
Keko dug deep, drew a Chimeran breath, and spit fire into her hand. Let it burn and crackle and glow with its own life. As he eyed her weapon, she scanned the desolate, windy surroundings, searching for other Secondaries—his backup. No one visible, but she could make out his path, tracing how he’d managed to cut her off. She’d zigged and zagged too much and he’d merely taken the shortest distance between points A and B. A dumb mistake.
Returning her focus to the Ofarian, she noticed with satisfaction the heaving of his chest. He wore no shirt, just a lightweight vest with pockets and zippers.
At his side, one of his hands flexed and curled. Like he was getting ready to arm himself with his own magic.
“I’m ready,” she said, finding a firm stance, giving the fire a good burst of flame. “Not like Makaha. And I won’t miss.”
He didn’t flinch at mention of the man he’d maimed. “I’m not here to fight you.”
She nudged her chin in the direction from which he’d attacked her. “Where are the rest of them? Are they on their way, now that you’ve found me?”
Drowning in Fire Page 13
