Afterglow (Wildefire) (5 page)

Modo squirmed but Ash held tight. “I’m just an engineering student,” he protested. “I build prosthetics for amputees, for God’s sake. Fake feet, fake legs. What the hell could anyone possibly want from me?”

It was a valid question. But if Modo was truly Hephaestus, a god whose specialty was weapon making, and Colt had sent Eve to assassinate him . . . “It’s probably about what they don’t want from you, something they don’t want you to build. Something worth killing you for.” Her mind replayed watching Rolfe get skewered through the heart, watching the weeping willow tree crush Aurora, watching Raja get thrown off the side of a skyscraper. “Three of my friends are dead because of them. If you run away from me, if you won’t let me protect you—if they find you and get what they want—then my friends died for nothing.” Ash finally released him. “At least stay alive so they’ll have died for something.”

Modo surprised her by reaching out and tenderly
wiping the tears off her cheek. “It’s just rain,” she said.

Modo offered a sad, close-lipped smile. “Of course.” He nodded back toward the Renaissance fair. “So these guys really want to hurt me? To kill me?”

“Modo,” she said. “You were about two feet from being zapped with enough lightning to run Boston for a day.”

“Then I guess we better clear out of here . . . and get the hell out from under these rain clouds.” He cringed and ducked down, as though the lightning were coming for him again.

Once they’d climbed into his car, there was a moment when they both sat silently in the front seat. The car vibrated quietly beneath them. Modo’s hands rested on the steering wheel as he blankly watched the windshield wipers bobbing back and forth. “What do we do now?” he whispered.

Ash’s window had begun to fog up from the air conditioning. She drew a little flame in the condensation. “First we find out exactly what they don’t want you to build. . . .” When she’d finished the flame drawing, a few beads of water dribbled down the glass. “And then we build the hell out of it.”

Maui, 1831

This beach is your favorite
because the other gods avoid it.

The Council loathes it, in fact. Hundreds of islands in this archipelago, innumerable beaches to choose from . . . so why, they ask, would you willingly opt for the one covered in dark lava rocks over one with smooth, walkable sand?

To you this
is
walkable, comfortable. You love the way the coarse igneous stone feels beneath your bare feet. Those same dark stones protrude from the water, where the lava once pooled after cascading from the summit of Haleakalā and didn’t let anything stop its path until the sea itself finally cooled it.
I made this
, you think proudly. Although on second thought, as you gaze back toward where the rising sun is illuminating the summit of Haleakalā, you think:
I made
all
this.
Every big island, every little one, all gifts of the volcanoes, of the magma
rising up through the sea. You may not remember it—they were from a former incarnation of Pele, after all—but this beach and the archipelago in general are a point of major personal pride and accomplishment for you.

As you walk in the shallows, you’re so busy watching the morning light play over the bay to the south that you don’t see the corpse until you trip over it.

You nearly drop knees-first down onto the man’s back, but catch your balance. He floats facedown in the shallows. He wears no shirt, and his waterlogged trousers are in tatters. Curiosity seizes you, so you bend down and roll the man over.

The first thing that you notice: He’s not of your people. The deep tan of his skin leads you to believe that he’s lived under a sun just as strong as the one that kisses these islands, but he is by no means an islander.

The second thing that you notice: He is beautiful.

It’s an otherworldly beauty. You’ve long thought that Tangaroa, the sea god on the Council, was the summit of attractiveness, among gods and mortals alike. And he’s shown no subtlety in the way that he looks at you.

But this dead man is something else altogether. His hair is cropped close to his head and bristly. Unlike Tangaroa and the others, his skin remains untouched by tattoos. He’s muscular, from his thick neck down to his tapered torso. You can learn a lot from a man’s skin, but this corpse’s flesh is a blank canvas. No scars at all to suggest he’d ever been to war; no calluses on his open palms
to suggest that he was a fisherman or, for that matter, had ever worked a day in his life.

It’s not unusual for dead men to occasionally wash up on these shores, but their bodies are usually bloated, or rotting, or covered in sores from where they’ve been nibbled away by fish.

This stranger, however, must be newly dead, because he shows no sign of decay, or of being fish food. On a whim you lean over and press your ear to his bare chest.

You hear the beat of his heart at the same time he springs back to life.

The stranger bolts upright and throws up a mouthful of briny vomit that you barely dodge in time. His eyes are wild, and he flounders in the water, frantically patting around his body to make sure that he still has all his limbs and all his flesh. His crazed, wide pupils finally focus on you, crouched in a defensive position on a lava rock, and one word escapes his mouth, a word you’ve heard the missionaries use before:

“Angel?” he mutters.

Then his eyes roll back into his head. He collapses back onto the lava rocks and loses consciousness once more.

For a few moments you gaze down at him, expecting him to stir again. He remains unmoving, but his chest moves up and down with labored breaths.

You glance around the beach, as though you might not be truly alone. There is only the wind and the lapping tide.
The Council has a strict rule when it comes to outsiders: They are not welcome here. Many foreign explorers have sailed past these shores, tried to give their own new names to things that have had names for many years. Missionaries visit your islands to bring word of their god . . . without realizing that there are many gods already walking these shores, down among their people, where they belong. You’ve used your storm powers yourself to send lightning bolts down on unwelcome ships, ruffled the ocean with swells to ward off foreigners.

There’s something magical about this one though. He’d somehow survived the elements, possibly drifted for days or weeks, from somewhere far beyond the horizon, and still arrived here unscathed.

So you make up your mind: You must hide him from the Council until you’ve had a chance to speak with him, to learn of his past.

You know just the place too. You scoop him up in your arms; he may be larger and heavier than you, but your strength is unparalleled on these islands. Then you carry him down the shore to the sea cave.

You often come to this cave to reflect. It’s concealed under the shadow of a magnificent sea arch—a monument of stone carved away by the ocean that protrudes from the cliff face above like a sea giant’s elbow. You’ve always loved the sound of the tide as it echoes down the tunnel; it’s almost like a poem whispered to you by Tangaroa, the sea god . . . although Tangaroa is just a fleeting thought
right now, with a strange man cradled in your arms.

You wade through the waist-high water until the tunnel ground rises up to a patch of sand that’s safe even from high tide. You place the stranger down on the smoothest area you can find, far enough from the water that he won’t accidentally roll in and drown while he’s still unconscious.

His eyes flicker half-open for a few seconds. He looks delirious and as if slumber will drag him down again any moment, but there’s a brief flash when he gazes up at your face with complete clarity. His hand touches the side of your cheek, and while instinct tells you to pull away, you let his smooth fingers cup your skin. A deep warmth flushes your face where his palm lingers.

Then he says five words to you, four of them in the language of the missionaries, but one of which is all too familiar and sucks the warmth right out of your cheeks.

“Thank you,” he whispers, blinking twice. “Thank you, Pele . . .”

Before he can explain how he knew your name or that you were the legendary volcano goddess, he’s dragged down into the murky dark of a feverish sleep.

You want so badly to wait beside him until he wakes again. However, it is the morning before the new moon, which means the monthly Council meeting will start shortly. You must not arouse the suspicion of the others if you’re to keep this a secret for now.

So you reluctantly wade back down the tunnel. You
cast a final look at the sleeping stranger before you tear open the air and step through a portal into a forest not too far from this sea cave.

But suddenly, everything seems too far from the cave and the human heart beating within it.

You hate when you’re not the last one to arrive. Life on the islands has bred patience in the other gods that you distinctly lack, and so you make a point of being a little late so you don’t have to wait for anyone else to lazily straggle in. This time, though, everyone seems to be tardy—and there’s no real excuse, since there are no clouds to block the sun’s progress across the sky, marking the time of day.

You’d know because they’re your clouds to put there.

Instead, when you emerge from the portal into the bamboo forest on the eastern end of Maui, at the base of Haleakalā, only Rangi—Father Sky—and Papa—Mother Earth—await you. Rangi and Papa are both older than you and the others. You call them the elders, even though they’ve only seen five more years than you have. Still, there’s a sternness in the couple that the other three lack.

The bamboo shoots in the clearing rustle as the portal seals closed behind you. Both Rangi and Papa offer you a nod and an “Aloha kakahiaka.” You nod back to Rangi, who has his arms crossed, and say, “Ka makani ‘olu‘olu,” to thank him for the delicate wind that’s threading through the trees. It’s a refreshing breeze that certainly
didn’t come from you. He shrugs off the compliment and mutters, “He mea iki ia,” as though anyone could change the fervor of the wind with a flick of their hand.

Tu, the god of war, is the next to arrive, on foot instead of through a portal like you. Just about every inch of his body is covered with intricately patterned tattoos. Strangely, no needle has ever touched his skin. He was born this way.

Soon after, the stealthy Tane slips out from between the bamboo shoots, which didn’t even tremble as he moved through them like a wraith. He spends so much time among the leaves that his bare chest and arms always maintain a greenish stain, and his legs remain powdered with soil. Today he has an even wider smirk than usual on his face when he arrives, and he’s chuckling the way he always does. You’ve never seen him in a bad mood.

“New missionaries came ashore on O‘ahu,” he explains without so much as an “aloha” first. “I found the highest branch that I could and perched there, making terrifying sounds. Then I woke all the bats to attack them from above. They thought I was some sort of forest spirit haunting them and warning them to turn back.”

You snort. “But you
are
a forest spirit.”

“Yes, but spirits to them are evil red creatures, enemies of their god.” Tane reaches under his kapa loincloth and pulls out a green fruit with a furry coating. You don’t want to know where in his malo he was storing that.

“Do those even grow here?” you ask.

He takes a big bite out of the fruit, and the juice dribbles down his chin. “They do now. I ask the trees, and the trees listen.”

“With some help from the earth,” Papa adds.

At the edge of the clearing, where the bamboo forest gives way to a short cliff and the ocean pools below, something hisses like water turning to steam. Tangaroa rises up from the pool below, supported by a geyser that carries him to the cliff top. Once he steps off, the plume collapses behind him.

His eyes usually regard you with warmth and affection, but there’s something wrathful in them today. He didn’t even look this furious when you out-wrestled him a year ago. “Who is he?” he barks at you the moment his feet hit solid ground.

You frown. So your secret, secluded beach isn’t quite so secluded after all. “Have you been following me, Tangaroa? Have you been . . . watching me?”

Tangaroa purses his lips.
That’s never bothered you before
, his eyes say. “I didn’t need to follow you. Do you think an outlander could drift through
my
seas to
my
shores without me knowing about it? When it comes to the waters around these islands, my eyes see all.”

The others are watching silently, but Tane lets out a giggle. “If that’s the case,” he says between bites of his fruit, “I hope you’ve looked the other way when I’ve gone swimming with a few certain girls on O‘ahu.”

Tangaroa growls at Tane to silence him. Before he can
launch more accusations at you, Rangi speaks, his voice as deep and tremulous as thunder. “There is an elder on Kaua‘i, a blind man who has achieved such stillness in body and soul that he can stand out in the water and snatch a fish from a passing school with his hands. He is also a seer. He has told me many stories, not all of which have come true . . . but there was one a few years ago that I never forgot: a prophecy about a Driftwood Stranger, a man from another land who would come and bring ruin to us all.”