Drowning in Fire

by Hanna Martine

  Twisting his head to the sky, he scanned the beautiful map of stars, instantly knowing his position below them. Pen in hand, he made a series of dots on the paper as he remembered them from the star map, taking into account the three-dimensional nature of it and adjusting it accordingly. A square marked the location the stone prayer had showed to be the Source, that glowing circle in the center of the carved figure’s chest. Then he turned to the map of the Hawaiian Islands and marked where he and Keko currently stood.

  In his head he overlaid the current pattern of stars above with how they would change from the vantage point of the Source. His pen flew over the map, the angles and dimensions automatically shifting in his mind, pen lines mimicking his thought processes. Primaries would use equations and fancy tools and computers, but the stars were part of his Ofarian blood, and he just knew.

  “There.” A swish of the pen out in the open blue part of the ocean northwest of Nihau, the last main Hawaiian island past Kauai.

  Keko bent close to the circle and the X he’d drawn. “Are you sure? There’s nothing out there.”

  He sat back on his heels, ignoring the sick feeling starting in his stomach. “The islands are an archipelago. Thousands of uninhabited little land masses stretching for thousands of miles into the Pacific. Your Source is on one of them. That one. Way out there.” He tapped his circle.

  She straightened and gazed off into the dark inland. “I thought it might be a—”

  “Volcano? Like Kilauea?”

  “Yeah.”

  He frowned. “Maybe it is. I don’t know what’s there.”

  She faced him in her confident way that turned him on like nothing else. “Are you still going to try to stop me?”

  Oh, that answer? He still didn’t know it. Still didn’t know which truth he would speak.

  He could tell her now what Aya said, what she’d warned the entire Senatus about, but Keko wouldn’t believe him. She would still see it as manipulation, and he wouldn’t blame her.

  Time. He had some time. And neither of them was going anywhere tonight.

  Closing the space between them, he slid his hands around her body, loving how her arms came around his neck almost instantly. Brushing his mouth against hers, he murmured, “Not at this moment, no.”

  He might have to, though. And he didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to think what that might mean to the Chimeran people. To her.

  Didn’t want to admit that stopping her would annihilate every last thread of connection he and Keko had ever formed. And that hurt most of all.

  She tilted her head back, her dark eyes simmering. “But tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow, I will think about tomorrow.”

  A long, slow blink. “And tonight?”

  Like his vision, his very existence at that moment narrowed down to her. He stole a page from her book of honesty and forthrightness and made every word count, let her see everything he felt inside. “Tonight? Be with me.”

  • • •

  It would be a long, cold hike across the fields to the natural, protected area by the tree at the edge of air elemental property. If only she could get out of the compound first.

  The premier had dismissed Aya from his office, then locked the door in her face. Through the mottled glass she watched his shape righting the toppled bookcase and replacing the objects and books upon the shelves. He got a broom and swept up the broken glass, all but erasing the confrontation with Jason. Who was, chances were, already heading for Reno to destroy a human mind.

  Aya went to the door leading out into the false church and knocked. A few minutes later the door swung open and fresher air rushed into the tiny, gray-painted room that was beginning to close in on her like the caves Within.

  “You done?” Nancy asked, her forehead wrinkled.

  Aya nodded. “Take me to the gate.”

  Nancy took her on a completely different path to the outer walls. Aya could never track her way through the maze of alleys and narrow streets and strategically placed dead ends, but of course, that was the whole idea. When they reached the gate, a guard came out of a little hut whose windows glowed blue-green with computer screens. He unlocked the exit door and Aya peered out into the vast, windy fields beyond.

  “Wait.”

  Aya pivoted at the sound of the familiar voice. Aaron peeled himself away from the interior shadows and approached her. The guard fell back into his little hut and Nancy, with a respectful nod to Aaron, melted back into the city labyrinth.

  Though Aya longed to make a run for the field, she folded her hands and looked up at the approaching Air, who wore a different expression—owned a separate demeanor altogether, actually—than that of the premier.

  Aaron was older than his leader, somewhere in his fifties, Aya guessed, and his coloring was much paler than the premier’s tanned, worn appearance. He cocked his head as he regarded her.

  “Yes?” she prompted.

  “How can you look so human,” he murmured, “when you are so clearly not?”

  She did not move and kept her features as still as stone. Evolution was the Children’s greatest secret—even greater than their hidden domain and their means of travel across the planet. No Primary or Secondary knew of the choice presented to each Child. None knew that some humans who now walked Aboveground had been born Within.

  “What you did with the earth,” he went on, staring at her with bald curiosity, “seems impossible. For you to have been . . . that. And now you are . . . this. I have never seen a Secondary do anything like that.”

  She sensed her hair respond to him, the long white tendrils coiling around her wrists like vines. His eyes dropped to the motion, then widened with wonder. Not with fear or mistrust or doubt.

  Perhaps in this man she might find an ally. Perhaps someone more sympathetic and less leery than the premier.

  “We are not Secondary,” she replied. It had never been declared a secret, that statement about her people’s history.

  Aaron crossed his arms. “What do you mean?”

  Aya laced her fingers. “Children are actually Primaries. We are sisters and brothers to humanity, born as one being at the dawn of time, and then separated as life changed with the earth.”

  A heavy pause followed. “How come no scientists or archaeologists ever found skeletons or evidence of you, like they did early humans?”

  “Because we die Within.” Or, if a Child had already evolved, they died Aboveground and no one was the wiser.

  “Fascinating,” Aaron breathed.

  She lifted her shoulders in a movement she’d copied from Keko. “So you see, we are not truly Secondary. We’ve always been here. And we will always be—”

  A klaxon roared throughout the compound, the small device sitting on top of the guard hut throwing out the terrible, shrieking, repetitive alarm. She doubled forward, hands over her ringing ears. When she straightened, she watched with dread as the guard yanked shut the iron exit doors to the compound, locking her inside the walls.

  After screaming something to her she could not hear over the cacophony, Aaron took off running back through the tangle of buildings. That guard had a phone pressed to his ear, his hands flying over various keyboards. She could stand here and wait to see when they’d actually let her go . . . or she could follow Aaron and find out the reason behind the horror in his eyes.

  His feet disappeared around the first left corner and she sprinted after him before he could take another turn and be lost to the labyrinth.

  They ran and ran, this path far more linear and shorter than the other two she’d been pulled along. Very soon she and Aaron burst into the tiny square in front of the church she’d just left. Air elementals spilled from the bland, narrow buildings, streaming toward the church, their hands to their mouths and eyes turned up to another alarm blaring on top of the steeple.

  Aaron
sliced through the growing crowd, pushing up the steps and toward the doors. Aya followed, taking advantage of the space his people afforded him.

  The church doors gave way under Aaron’s mighty push, and only after Aya tumbled in after him did he realize she’d followed. But if he meant to shout at her or kick her out, there was no time because Nancy was running down the back hall toward them, panic making her face white and her eyes impossibly wide.

  It was then Aya heard the screaming.

  A woman’s scream, a piercing wail that shot down from somewhere on the second floor. It never ended. Just kept running on a terrified, intensifying loop.

  “Is that Hillary?” Aaron demanded of Nancy when she finally reached them.

  Out of breath, Nancy replied, “Yes. Are the gates secured?”

  Aaron nodded, ashen face turned to the stairs.

  Footsteps pounded on the floor above, how many sets Aya couldn’t say. At least three, maybe more. An explosion of shouting and the distinct sounds of a fight, fists and kicks and more things breaking. It was a violent one that made the scene she’d witnessed earlier through the premier’s office door feel like a child’s temper tantrum. Men shouted and grunted, cried out in pain or in threat. She could make sense of none of it.

  A million emotions sailed through the building, bombarding her, wreaking havoc with her human senses. None of them were good.

  “The premier!” Aaron had his hand on the railing, one foot poised on the bottom step.

  Nancy grabbed his arm, pulled him back. “Already dead. Hillary found him in his bathroom. Throat slit.”

  Aya felt like the earth was taking her under while locked in this human body.

  The fight upstairs rolled closer, the walls practically bowing out from the force of multiple bodies repeatedly striking them. The sounds were almost as deafening as the klaxon that still blared outside.

  Then all of a sudden it stopped, the air charged with dread. There was a different struggle above, this one more focused, less intense. The muffled sounds of men’s terse voices drifted down.

  Two males appeared at the top of the stairs, each clamping hard to one of Jason’s arms. Jason. Who was covered in blood.

  FIFTEEN

  By the time they got back to the B and B, the rain had started up again. A teasing spatter this time, thrown about in the wind. They walked side by side along the quiet road—the first time one of them had not led or been chased. They did not speak. Keko fought the urge to reach for his hand.

  Griffin opened the door to their room, and this time the slow inward swing of the door didn’t scare her. Didn’t confuse her. Because she’d made her decision and got what she needed from him.

  And now she just had him. For tonight, at least.

  Still standing on the porch, she peered inside. “It’s nice. A bed and everything.” Her laugh was quiet and nervous, and she didn’t recognize the sound of it. Hated it, even. “Haven’t slept on one of those in a while.”

  Slowly, so slowly, he pulled the key out of the lock and turned around to face her. She loved the way he moved, had loved it from the first moment she’d seen him in that parking garage. Loved it even more as she remembered how he’d selflessly vaulted himself off that rock to attack the treeman.

  She’d gotten spooked when she’d stood in this exact spot earlier, weighted down by choices and feeling buried in her revived feelings for him. So she’d headed down to that bar, ordered two burgers to go, and sat down to have a good think. A small part of her had hoped he wouldn’t come looking for her.

  But the vast majority of her was glad he did.

  Brave Queen, she wanted him. In ways wholly different than she was used to. In ways that challenged her reasoning and her culture and the rules laid out by the Senatus. It felt okay to admit that now, standing there on a rainy porch in Hawaii with him staring expectantly at her. They’d each surrendered something. They’d each received something in return. They were going into tonight carrying a tenuous link of trust. It was something new for them, and like a bulky item of clothing she was unused to wearing, she was still shifting around in it, trying to get the fit right.

  “When was the last time?” Under the sprinkle of rain his voice was as rich as coffee.

  She blinked. “Sorry?”

  As he quirked the tiniest of smiles, his expression turned soft and sublime. That was what she’d glimpsed in him years ago, that wonderful, brief moment when he’d told her he thought they should try to be together. She wanted more of that.

  “The last time you slept in a bed,” he added.

  A vision of crumpled hotel sheets, throw pillows kicked all over the floor, the bedspread stuffed somewhere in a corner, came to her with vivid clarity. “With you.”

  A lift of those eyebrows. “Three years? And before that?”

  “Never.”

  “Never?”

  “In my house, the one that Bane lives in now up on the bluff, I put in a hammock so I could sleep and feel the breeze all around me. When I lay in it I could see the whole Chimeran valley through the front door. I used to sneer down at the Common House, thankful I didn’t have to sleep on dirt and grass mats like them.” She ran her hand down the door jamb. “And then I was made to.”

  He was still standing just inside the room, a hand on the doorknob, as she lingered out on the damp porch. Everything about him screamed an invitation to sex. It unnerved her, this role reversal. She should be the one beckoning him inside. She should be the one with the salacious glint in her eye. Shockingly, for the first time ever, she couldn’t deny enjoying being on the receiving end.

  Griffin, the beautiful man, gave a gentle nod for her to enter. She did, and he softly shut the door behind her. The sound of the rain shifted from wet plops on wood to a light drum on the roof. The smell of cotton and cleaning disinfectant replaced that of the rain. Darkness enveloped them, the only light coming from the balcony sconces that shone through the lighter colored pattern pieces on the tropical-themed drapes. Yet she saw him—oh, how she saw him—standing there in the center of their rented, temporary world for however long they could keep it wrapped around themselves.

  She would not think about what she didn’t or couldn’t have, but instead vowed to take joy in who and what she had with her now.

  His hands were in his pockets, stretching the T-shirt across his flat abdomen. She went to him.

  Not a lunge. Not a physical body throw. Not an attack. A careful, deliberate advancement.

  She felt everything, listened to the song of every sensation. The rough nap of the throw rug beneath the soles of her feet. The steady pound of her heart. The pull of his stare as his eyes locked with hers, dark upon dark, matched in desire.

  As she came to within inches of him, his body this incredible magnet to her senses, his absolute attention on her a sensual potion she was absorbing through her pores, nothing else existed in the whole world.

  He removed his hands from his pockets, a soft shush of fabric.

  She pressed him against the door. No, he was pulling her. It was impossible to tell. All she knew was that his hands—those things that wielded an element she’d been taught to hate, to fight—had closed around her waist, pulling up her tank top and sliding over her skin. All she knew was that their mouths were together again, and it was the slowest, softest, wettest kiss she’d ever experienced.

  She’d never known that you could kiss like this. That the slower you did it, the more you wanted it. The more you wanted it, the deeper the need rooted in your system. And the deeper the need, the more desperate you felt to have him now. Only it was the holding back that made everything that much more brilliant.

  All she could taste was Griffin. He invaded her, surrounded her, and she knew, without a doubt, that she’d been waiting for this moment, to find this level of connection. With anyone. It wasn’t something she could force with Chimeran-taug
ht brash words or bold actions, or by opening her legs for whomever she desired back in the valley. This is what her soul had needed, and it had been waiting for Griffin.

  And here he was. Touching her, pulling her into him with such exquisite, nearly painful gentleness.

  Slipping her hands between their bodies, her palms rested on his chest. There was something about the cool, smooth cotton stretched over him, that delicate divider between her fingers and his skin, that made a starburst of longing explode in her mind. The force of it pressed thought and rationalization into the deepest recesses. Filled her only with the awareness of him and the various places they were connected.

  Lips.

  Hips.

  Hands.

  Hearts.

  They’d never shared this kind of innocent, covered, slow touch. Why did it drive her this crazy when she’d already seen him naked, when she knew firsthand what beauty was underneath?

  Time had never been in their favor, but now it seemed like they had forever. The clock and all the minutes and seconds in the world belonged to them. She’d bundle them inside her and keep them always, every single one of them packed with memories of their mouths together, the wet press of their tongues, and the low sounds that echoed the movement of their bodies.

  Beneath her palms his pecs tightened, and she lost control of the tenderness of her touch. Her fingers curled, her ragged nails digging into the cotton, searching for the skin underneath but only getting his heat. His hands gripped her tighter, sliding down from her waist to her hips to her ass. He hiked her body harder against him, and she could feel his restraint, the way he was holding back, too.

  She wanted to stretch this out, wanted to know every single molecule of him. She wanted to learn everything her heart hadn’t already felt. There was so much of it, she realized. So much she’d never opened herself up to. Because she’d never wanted to with anyone but him.