Your woman. Your mate.
Amiri closed his eyes, fighting himself. Blindsided. Drowning. Shape-shifters mated for life, and the bond went deep as the soul; inexplicable, inescapable. Once found, never lost—rare as butterflies whispering Shakespeare. His own father had never found a true mate. Never just one woman, one heart to call his own. He had fought viciously against the idea, called it weakness. Madness. And it was, Amiri realized. All of this, madness.
“Hush,” he murmured shakily, pressing his lips against Rikki’s short hair. “It was a dream.”
“No,” she breathed, and her hands clutched the front of her shirt, knuckles pressing hard against her breasts. She turned and peered up at his face; he thought he saw tears, but her gaze slid sideways, over his shoulder, and her expression shifted into alarm.
Amiri looked. Rictor stood behind him. His gaze was hooded, his mouth set in a hard flat line. Rikki began to push away; Amiri tightened his arms, holding her close.
“Rikki Kinn,” he said quietly. “Meet Rictor. He is … an acquaintance of mine.”
“An acquaintance,” she echoed, sounding baffled, shaken. But she stared, and he watched her surprise slide into something sharper as she analyzed what little she could see of the man.
Rikki Kinn was no fool. She did not look happy. She did not smell relieved.
“You found us,” she said, voice flat. “How?”
Rictor’s mouth tilted. “No jumping for joy? No hugs and kisses for your savior?”
“You’re no salvation yet—and I don’t know jack shit about who you are. Answer my question.”
“Magic,” Rictor replied, with enough dry humor to make Rikki’s frown deepen. “Something you should start getting used to.”
“Rictor,” Amiri said sharply. “Enough. See to Eddie.”
Rictor gave him a long look. So did Rikki. Amiri ignored them both, reaching out to pat the young man’s hand. His skin was hot, even more so than before—and it seemed, almost, that the air around him shimmered.
Rictor knelt beside Eddie. He began to touch him and Rikki said, “No, don’t.”
He ignored her. “The boy’s already dead. His body just doesn’t know it yet.”
Rikki made a low strangled sound. Amiri swallowed hard. “You must save him, Rictor.”
“And if I do? Are you willing to pay the price?”
Amiri said nothing. He had little to offer but his own life, and that was something he could not give—not unless Rictor offered to protect Rikki, as well. And he knew better than to ask.
“You’re still choosing him over her,” Rictor said, and studied the woman with a cold scrutiny that made her stiffen in Amiri’s arms. Amiri stifled a growl, shooting the man a warning look that was completely ignored in favor of Rikki, whose scent turned hard, brittle.
“What choice?” she asked him roughly. “What are you talking about?”
“You.” Rictor’s mouth slanted once again into a cold smile. “Matters of the heart.”
Amiri would have attempted murder, but just at that moment, Eddie’s head moved; a restless jerk, followed by a twitching hand. His eyelids fluttered. Relief surged, though short-lived. Blood trickled from the young man’s mouth; a small stream, then wider, thicker. His throat gurgled with an ugly wet sound that cut Amiri to the bone.
Rikki lunged, reaching for Eddie. Amiri held her back. She twisted, struggling. “Let me go. We have to turn his head or he’ll choke.”
Amiri said nothing, still staring. Temperatures were rising, heat washing through the air, shimmering and rolling over his prickling skin like an open roaring oven—crowding the air in his lungs until it was hard to breathe. Rikki stopped fighting him.
Eddie began to twitch. Violent, restless, eyes still closed. Another nightmare. Death, idling.
“He’s losing control,” Rictor snapped. “Go, now!”
Amiri was already on his feet, Rikki in his arms, but it was too late. The world collapsed into a shower of sparks, foliage crisping golden and hot with veins of fire—the air itself etched with webs of heat and light—nowhere to run, no place to go. Eddie cried out behind them, a hard wordless yell of utter misery, and flames exploded from the ground as though they stood on the surface of the sun. Rikki screamed. Amiri felt a flash of pain.
And then Rictor was there, his arms around Rikki, his fingers digging hard into Amiri’s shoulders. The air became a vacuum; fire and smoke curling against an invisible shell, which turned green as sun-washed emeralds, pulsing with the same hard light that Amiri found in Rictor’s eyes; burning, unforgiving, cold as the air that soothed the pain radiating from the soles of his feet. Blood roared. Rikki shouted. Rictor closed his eyes, and Amiri stared into the maelstrom, searching for Eddie.
Then, nothing. Fire, light, all of it gone. Amiri found himself trapped inside a void, senses stuffed, and the only thing he could feel was Rikki in his arms, trembling. His knees buckled; he almost dropped her, and the both of them sank to the ground. Limp, boneless, sagging against each other. He hugged her close, pressing his lips into her hair. She buried her face in his neck.
Amiri’s sight returned slowly. The world was so quiet he would have thought himself deaf had it not been for the sound of Rikki’s harsh breathing. Smoke curled through the air, burning his nostrils and eyes. Nothing but thick snowy ash remained of their scant belongings and the surrounding jungle. No vines, no trees, no guns. The fire had cut an incinerating swath, spreading outward in a circle at least several hundred feet wide.
And in the middle of it, Eddie. His clothes were in burnt tatters, but his skin was pink and unharmed. Rictor knelt beside him. Amiri stared, unable to speak, too afraid to know. Rikki twisted, following his gaze.
“Eddie,” she said, hoarse.
“He’s still alive,” said Rictor. “Barely. He has minutes, at most.”
Rikki broke free, scrambling across the charred smoking ground to Eddie’s side. She touched his face, smoothing back his hair with a tenderness that broke Amiri’s heart.
“I’ll pay the price if you can help him,” she said, tearing her gaze from Eddie to look at Rictor. Amiri was too shocked to protest. Rictor also appeared surprised. Both men stared, and her eyes sharpened. “Don’t play dumb. Don’t you dare. Not after what I’ve seen and heard.”
“You’re putting too much faith in a stranger,” Rictor replied. “Not your style, Doctor.”
Rikki’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll give you whatever you want. But that’s assuming you have a cure, a way to get Eddie out of here. And if you do, then you’re shit. Shit to let that boy die. Shit to let all those others—all of us—lose our lives from this disease.”
“Careful,” he said. “Keep talking like that and I might just begin to like you.”
She gave him the finger. A grim smile touched Rictor’s mouth, and he looked down at Eddie. Spread his hand over the young man’s chest.
“This will cost,” he said, but so quietly it was almost an afterthought.
“I will pay,” Amiri said, moving close to Rikki’s side.
Rictor shot him a hard look. “No. You won’t.”
He and Eddie vanished.
Chapter Eleven
Large fires tended to draw the eye at night: Amiri and Rikki did not wait to see who would find them. They did not talk. Just started walking, and after a time—given that she could not see in the darkness and kept falling on her face—Amiri picked her up in his arms and began to run.
Rikki could count on four fingers the number of men who had ever hauled her around like a sack of potatoes, and Amiri had the dubious distinction of being the fifth. There was an art to it. Smooth gait, strong arms, an almost uncanny ability to keep various body parts from slamming into anything hard. Her father had been quite good.
Amiri was better. He cradled her against his chest, folding her so close and tight she could have been curled in the fetal position on some hard vertical bed. His strength was immense. Being held by him felt safer than a cocoon made out o
f woven steel—like nothing could touch her. Nothing bad, ever.
And oh, the irony. Glowing eyes. Men who might be cheetahs, who vanished and who lit fires with their minds. Incredible, impossible; she was sensible, a scientist. Surely that meant something.
Or not. It was too weird. Hairless cat, weird. UFO, weird. The kind of weird that showed up in the National Enquirer, or those late night television documentaries her dad had loved, the ones about singing crystals and possessed nuns and the elusive tracks of some howling Tibetan Yeti. Oh, her dad would think this was great. He’d be all over Amiri like … like …
She couldn’t finish the thought. It hurt too much.
The sky began to lighten. Rikki could not guess how long they had been traveling. Amiri found an old elephant trail—pounded earth, decades old, following a circuitous path deeper and farther into the rich heart of the wild and the green. It led them to a stream, and there, finally, he set her down. He did not look tired, but she thought he must be. His body seemed to soak in the early rays of morning sunlight, and he stretched and stretched. Nearly naked.
She looked away, face red. She could ignore his body at night—no light to see—but it was different now. And she liked looking at him far too much.
The edge of the water was crowded with vines and shining leaves, the soft muddy shore trampled with fine small hoof prints the size of her thumb. Rikki crouched, scooping water into her mouth. It made her think of Eddie. She could still see his face in her mind, bloody and slack-jawed; like Frankie, like Frankie, like Frankie in the car with the glass all over his body and her mother screaming, screaming, screaming.
“Will he live?” Her voice was low, hoarse. The first words she had spoken in hours.
Amiri took a moment. “If Rictor says he can make the boy well, then he can. And he will.”
“You trust him.”
“No. But I trust the woman who does.”
Rikki tasted something rather unpleasant at the mention of another woman—a woman who Amiri trusted. She wondered what it took to gain that trust. And what it would mean to be his friend, to have him care, truly, from the heart.
“Your friend Rictor—”
He shook his head, cutting her off. “Not a friend.”
“Okay.” She hesitated, considering. “So how does he do what he does?” Vanishing, healing, stopping a goddamn inferno …
“Rictor is not human,” Amiri said. Like it was the most natural thing in the world. And to him, perhaps it was.
“He looks human,” Rikki said. But then, she had met quite a few people in her life who wore their humanity as nothing but a veneer. Being human and having humanity were two different things—biology and a state of mind. Heart and soul.
Amiri shrugged. “There is a reason I did not want your colleague to draw my blood.”
Mack. She had hardly thought of him, had not really grieved. “How do you know your blood is different? Have you done tests?”
“Tests were done on me,” he said flatly. “I overheard the discussion of my results.”
“Ah,” she breathed, and then, with some hesitation: “Will you tell me what they said?”
He blinked once, and the mask slid into place—that cool neutrality, painful to see because it reminded Rikki so much of herself. “It meant little to me. Only, that there were recognizable differences in my DNA. Acute variations. Something even a rudimentary expert in genetics would recognize.”
“Huh.” Rikki bit her bottom lip. Thinking hard.
Amiri arched an eyebrow. “You would like to study me.”
“Not at your expense. But I would also be lying if I didn’t admit to some curiosity.”
“Curiosity killed the cat,” he replied, eyes glittering. “And science is a cold art.”
“Science saves lives,” she reminded him.
He stared a moment longer, tension radiating from his body, then took a deep breath, fingers flexing. “I am sorry. I forget you are not them.”
That stung. “Thanks a lot.”
He gave her a sharp look. “You have no idea what I endured.”
Rikki felt the insane urge to tear off her shirt and show him just what it was she thought he had endured. God only knew it could not be worse. But she kept her hands clenched. Looked him straight in the eyes. “You went through something terrible. You think about it every day. Little things remind you. Even sleep isn’t safe because you have nightmares. So yeah, I get that. I understand. But what happened to you is not my fault. Don’t blame me, or all of humanity, for what you went through. I did not hurt you.”
“But it is in you,” he whispered. “The danger.”
Anger stirred. “It’s in everyone. Or haven’t you figured that out yet?”
Amiri closed his eyes. “You could not possibly understand.”
“Of course not,” she breathed. “Because there’s no way at all I would know what it’s like to be kidnapped and humiliated, or tortured within an inch of my life. No way at all I would know what it feels like to be treated worse than an animal.”
Amiri stared, and his expression was awful, naked, a bitter thing to taste. He leaned toward her, and she held up her hand, staving him off. Scrambling backward in her haste to get away.
“Never mind,” she rasped, and got to her feet. Started walking. Her eyes stung. She did not know why. He had meant nothing. He was afraid. Same as her.
Rikki heard footsteps. She walked faster, then found herself bursting into a hard run. Heard pursuit, but did not look back. It was all she could do to keep her footing, to see past the tears clouding her vision. Her heart ached so badly she thought it would burst.
A thorny vine snagged her ankle. She started to go down. Never hit the ground. Hands grabbed her waist. She glimpsed dark skin and green leaves and a gasp of sky—right before she landed hard on a long lean body that grunted and slid beneath her.
Rikki tried to roll away, but Amiri’s arms tightened. She gave up without a fight. Too exhausted, sagging limp and tangled against his body. Tears leaked from her eyes. She could not stop crying, could not even think of the last time she had been this weepy. She did not want Amiri to see her. Begged herself every which way to suck it up and stay strong.
But he moved, rolling them on their sides, and he was big and warm and his hands touched her cheeks, his thumbs smoothing her skin, and his lips pressed once, twice, against her eyelids. He whispered, “Are you hurt?” and Rikki shook her head, hating herself, hating him. But hungry for his touch. Still hungry for his kindness.
“You don’t know me,” she finally managed to tell him, her voice raw. “You don’t have a right to tell me who I am.”
“And you have never done the same?” he prodded gently, though his own voice was hoarse, broken. “You have never been judge and jury?”
“All the time,” Rikki said.
“So,” Amiri murmured.
“Yeah.” Her tears began to dry, but her nose was disgusting. She tried to wipe at it, but his hands were still in the way, brushing tears from her cheeks. “I’m not who you think I am.”
Amiri tilted up her chin, forcing her to look at him. His face swam into focus, his skin rich and dark, his features fine as a knife’s edge. His eyes glowed, like amber soaked in sunlight, and the way he looked at her was just as warm and soft and sad.
“You and I,” he rumbled, and then, quieter: “I am too wary. I look for problems, upsets. I anticipate. It is the only way I know how to keep myself safe.”
“Yes,” she said. “I know how you feel.”
Amiri drew in a slow deep breath, and pressed his mouth against her ear. The brief contact made her shiver, but his voice, low and smooth, did far more, washing away the worst of the hurt as he murmured, “Forgive me. Please.”
Rikki closed her eyes. “Forgive you? For what? Being honest? Protecting yourself?”
“I was foolish.”
“You were afraid.”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
“Because I’m not li
ke you.” She took a deep breath. “You think I’ll hurt you because I’m human.”
“It is not that simple.”
“Of course not.”
Amiri remained silent, staring. There was a hush in the way he held himself that made her think he was more on edge than she; as though one wrong move, one word, one glance, would hurt him so far down she would never find him again. The idea hurt. She had thought she knew what misery felt like, but this was something else—and God, she was a fool.
Amiri reached out, very slowly, and caressed the corner of her eye. And then, even more carefully, he leaned closer. Rubbed his cheek against her cheek. Pressed his lips once more to her ear.
“I am sorry,” he said again, so quietly. “I am sorry to have caused you pain.”
“You’re sorry,” she said. “But you still don’t trust me.”
Amiri went very still, his lips lingering against her ear. “And does it matter to you, whom I trust?”
Rikki said nothing. Amiri’s hand slid behind her back, and this time when his mouth touched her ear, it felt like a kiss.
“Tell me,” he whispered.
“Yes,” she breathed. “It matters.”
“Ah,” he sighed. “Then I will trust you, Rikki Kinn. I will give you my trust. And you …”
“Yes.” She turned her head, just slightly, enough to look into his eyes. “Yes, Amiri. I’ll do the same.”
She had little choice but to say those words—her heart gave her no alternative—and she watched in tense silence as Amiri stared, his gaze brutal, without a mask to hide his hunger and loneliness, so naked and raw it stole her breath away. No one had ever looked at her with such eyes, with so much desire, and it marked her as deeply as the scars on her body, as deep as her memories of Markovic and her father. One look, the same as a knife. One look, as strong as love.
Rikki kissed him: light, gentle, a mere brushing of her lips across his mouth. Amiri did not react, remaining so still that for a moment she felt shot with uncertainty, shame. But just as she was about to pull away, Amiri’s hand shot from her cheek to the back of her head and he dragged her close.
The Last Twilight Page 17
