Drowning in Fire (34 page)

“You’ll lose your chance at a Senatus seat if you do that.”

“Fuck the Senatus. I want what’s best for Ofarians, and if I have to find another way, I’ll do it.”

At length Gwen said, “You know what I think?”

“No. Please tell me. I’m flailing over here.”

“I think you should talk to someone else.”

“David?” Griffin could use a good slap in the face. David was much less diplomatic than Gwen.

“No, not David.”

And she gave him a name he hadn’t expected.

He hung up with Gwen and reached over the counter to dial a new number. As it rang, he pushed aside the flapping portion of the door screen to see if the gas station owners were returning. The coast was still clear.

As someone picked up, the explosion of chaos on the other end of the line—music and the TV and young voices—had Griffin pinching the bridge of his nose to stave off emotion.

“Hello?” A deep, skeptical voice.

“Pop, it’s me.”

“Griffin.” He heard the familiar creak of the old couch as his father got off it.

“That’s Griffin?” called his mother in the background. “Is he okay?”

“Where the hell are you?” Pop demanded. “Everyone’s—”

“I’m sorry.” The apology was as much for interrupting his father as it was for his unexplained disappearance. “I’m fine, I promise. Is Henry around?”

“Henry?” Griffin heard his dad’s curiosity, but didn’t want to add anything more. “Yeah, he’s in his room. I’ll get him. You sure you’re okay?”

Griffin wasn’t remotely sure, but he said he was anyway.

The door to Henry’s room opened and a stream of really bad dance music tumbled out. “Turn that off,” their father shouted over it. “Your brother’s on the phone.”

The music cut. “Which one?” Henry asked.

“Pop?” Griffin said before the phone was handed over.

“Yes?”

“You didn’t hear from me today. No one in the family did. Okay?”

“I can’t at least tell people you’re all right?”

“No.” Griffin hated to do this. “And that’s an order. Please.”

Pop sighed. “Absolutely.” Then, “Come home safe.”

There was shuffling as the phone traded hands.

“Hey, buddy,” Griffin said.

“Griff!”

“How are you?”

“Good, I guess. Got a B on my math test yesterday. Thought you’d like to hear that.” There was very little excitement in Henry’s voice.

“I do. Wow, buddy, that’s great.”

Griffin’s chest filled up so suddenly and sharply he had to brace himself against the counter to keep his balance.

“So, ah,” Griffin said, “I was thinking that when I get back, I’d like to spend a little time with you at the gym. Help you out, like you asked.”

Henry gasped. “For real?”

The boy’s eagerness and excitement splintered Griffin’s emotions and shifted some muddy areas of thinking back into alignment. Sometimes Gwen was a genius.

Henry wanted nothing more than to follow in his parents’ and brothers’ and sisters’ footsteps, to become a soldier worthy of wearing the Ofarian black. To protect the race. To make his leader, and oldest brother, proud.

So who the hell was Griffin to deny him that? What gave Griffin the right to try to steer a boy into a life track he didn’t want to enter in the first place? How did that make Griffin any better than the old Board? It was Henry’s choice to make. It was Henry’s heart and passion on the line, and it was Griffin’s job to support him in whatever that was.

Griffin could, however, do exactly as he just professed to Gwen. He could still try to pave the way for other Ofarian kids who wanted to branch out. He could still focus on expanding their options, and that, in turn, would end up helping Henry.

There, in a dingy Hawaiian gas station, with Keko sprinting toward the first boat she saw, Griffin grinned at his baby brother through the phone.

“For real,” he said. “I’ll even help you with the formal training application if you want. But you gotta know I’m not going to pull any strings or anything. You want to do this, you do it with your own skills. You got that, soldier?”

“Aw, yeah!” The books and academic trophies on Henry’s shelves rattled as the kid jumped up and down.

“You and me, bud,” he added. “When I get back. I promise.”

Griffin twisted his head to the side and had to focus hard on an old Camel cigarettes poster, because who knew what was going to happen to him or his leadership or his people when he left Hawaii.

Then he hung up the phone, punched out of the gas station, and started jogging down the road.
Away
from Hilo. Because he realized while talking to Gwen that if Keko was intending to throw him off the chase, she wouldn’t have headed into the big town, toward the obvious source of boats. That’s exactly what she’d assume Griffin would think. No, she would go for the hidden spot, the remote area with fewer craft . . . so that’s exactly where Griffin went, too.

Because he couldn’t help the future and current generations of Ofarians by standing on the sidelines, by just throwing away all that he’d worked toward for five long years.

He couldn’t help Keko obtain a cure for her people if he didn’t find her first.

And he sure as hell couldn’t fight for the woman he loved if she went and got herself killed.

 • • • 

Keko would not cry. She would not fucking cry.

Enough water plagued her every step—it sat in her line of sight no matter where she looked, and it poisoned her heart with a slow drip. No tears. Anything but water. She turned up her inner heat, trying to burn away her emotions, but not nearly succeeding.

She concentrated on running, her legs pumping over the uneven ground as she clung to the edge of the Big Island, heading away from Hilo. The little enclave of homes and local shops and the B and B she’d burned fell behind. The land sloped hard upward, dense clumps of trees pointing inland, in the direction she did not want to go. The houses spread out and she slowed her steps, moving more carefully over private land, keeping to the cliff side draped in trees and greenery. Every now and then a large tour bus gave a high whine as it braked, and then gunned its way up and down the distant road.

The run refused to delete Griffin from her mind. He would come after her again. But he would be too late.

When he found her, she would be holding the whole of the Earth’s fire in her hands, and it would be hers to command. The Queen had touched the Source once and there had been no devastation like Aya had claimed. The same would be for Keko; her prayer had been answered and she could feel it.

Now she
did
want to be Queen. Fuck what she’d told Griffin just that morning. She wanted to rise above everything . . . but most especially heartbreak.

She slipped from a wide swatch of private land into an area heavily forested with tall, skinny trees that permanently swept back and away from the coast like a woman’s hair in the wind. The natural area climbed higher and higher, and at the very top the bluffs dove sharply downward. At the bottom and about a half mile to the northwest was a small community with a marina.

The air whistled as it tried to negotiate its way through the thick trees, and Keko had to slow down even more to get up and through the rocky, shaded area. She refused to listen to the moans and complaints of her body. It was how she’d been trained, and she was still Chimeran, above everything. She pushed and climbed until the sun went down, splashing into the ocean.

She wanted food. She craved water.

When Griffin’s stars popped out, she knew she had to stop. She could give herself fire to see by, yes, but it would also announce her presence to anyone peering out into the dark.

She found an outcrop of rock, a huge tree erupting from the top, its roots coiling down from the sides to form a black, moist, hidden cave, and she climbed into it. Thirty feet in front of her the bluff dropped off a scary distance into the roaring ocean. From her little hiding place she had a good vantage point to the left and right—high enough to see anyone approaching before they noticed her.

A distinct scent filled her nose, bringing with it an avalanche of unwanted emotion. It confused her until she remembered she was wearing Griffin’s T-shirt. Grinding the back of her skull into the rock, she turned her face to the treetops, trying to get away from the smell she loved but didn’t want to. If she could burn the black cotton like she’d burned his coat, she would. But she couldn’t.

She choked back any and all sorrow. Choked it back hard enough the tightness in her jaw turned to pain. Bitterness and disappointment and heartbreak and determination clenched every muscle into a wiry, uncomfortable, shaking mass. Though her eyelids dragged down, the extreme physical discomfort did not allow her to sleep.

She would stay awake until daybreak, then, and meet her fate under the sun.

So when she actually did wake up, blinking into pockets of sunlight breaking through the shadowed morning trees, it was with great disbelief. She was lying on her side, knees tucked into her chest.

Not ten feet away, Griffin leaned against a tree, watching her.

EIGHTEEN

Keko rolled to her feet before the sleep had been fully shoved from her head. There was no weakness in her muscles, no lingering rest or stiffness from unexpected sleep. Just power. Only alertness. And a fierce, focused glare, sharp as a blade, on the Ofarian man who watched her with infuriating calmness.

She’d been right. For once in her life she didn’t want to be, but Griffin’s appearance here—following her after he’d admitted to colluding with the Senatus to bring her in—proved he was driven only by his political motives. He was a liar. Nothing more. And nothing he could say would ever prove otherwise.

With a great leap she pushed out of the little cave and jumped down to the flat space among the trees below. The ground was squishy, cushioning her landing. Lowering her center of gravity, she circled around Griffin, arms pulled in and ready to do her fire’s bidding. Her chest filled with magic, her tongue and lips ready to unleash it.

A battle was coming, and this time she wasn’t sure if the loser would survive.

Griffin came away from the tree far too slowly, far too easily. His crossed arms dropped to his sides. A hunter’s gleam brightened his eyes. She knew that look well. He wore deadliness like invisible clothing.

Mist clung to the edges of his skin, blurring them against the early morning sky and the waving tree branches. It made him seem godlike, sprung from the atmosphere. She knew he’d dissolved his body and thrown himself to the wind, tracked her from the air. He carried nothing with him, wore nothing other than those black shorts with the side pockets. His chest and arms and face gleamed with moisture and she didn’t know if it was sweat or his magic. She didn’t care. It didn’t matter.

He was real now. Corporeal. Threatening. And he was coming for her. His legs made long strides across the dirt and mat of fallen foliage. The space between them halved.

Keko inhaled and showed the flame dancing at the back of her throat. “I’ll fucking burn you.”

“You would’ve done that back at the B and B. You wouldn’t have just left me.”

A pang of guilt hit her hard. It seemed he didn’t know what had happened after he’d left, how her residual magic had caused damage. She chose to say nothing.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said, for the eighty millionth time. “You don’t have to fight me.”

She could feel her body heating up with frustration, could see the grass and bushes around her start to shimmer from the terrible temperature she was throwing off. Just let Griffin try to touch her. She’d singe him.

“My only other choice is to stop, to go back with you. That isn’t happening.”

He took another step closer, his shoulders bunching up, fists forming. “It’s not your only choice. If you’d only—”

“I’m not perfect,” she said, thinking about the fire in the B and B. “Neither are you.”

“Never said I was.”

He started to circle around sideways, taking his back away from the edge of the cliff . . . and trying to push her toward it. Wouldn’t work. Not on
her
island.

His fists released as he raised his palms to her. “Will you please just listen to me?”

She blew a sheet of flame down her arm. “I already did and I’ve heard enough. Now you listen to me.”

After a great pause, in which he rolled and licked his lips several times, swallowing whatever lying words he wanted to spew out, he finally crossed his arms over his bare chest and said, “Fine. I’m listening.”

She pointed the flaming arm, a short spear of sparking fire extending out to him in warning. “You won’t take me back to the Senatus. You will not deny me this chance to do one great thing for my people. I believe that if the Source is what feeds my people our magic, it will grant me access to it. It will give me what I need without the destruction Aya tried to scare you with. You can chase me all you like, Griffin, but I won’t be your trophy on your wall as you sit back and think about how you duped me. About how you used me to get what you want.” She drew herself up. “I’m not yours. I won’t ever be yours.”

“But I,” Griffin said, “am yours.”

“Don’t you dare say that again.”

She released the fire, a great scarlet and gold bomb that barreled toward Griffin. She lost his face in it, her magic consuming her vision. Her will commanded her mind—her will and her anger, her determination and her love. And as the fireball swung toward him, the flames stretching tall, a tiny sliver of her wanted to pull it back. The rest of her, submerged in his lies and his so-called love, pushed the bomb toward him with renewed force.

The fireball imploded. It died midair, sucking into itself, before it could take down Griffin in a blaze of skin and hair and death.

As the fireball shrank and shrank, it changed. Shifted. The air around it blurred in a way she recognized as Ofarian power drawing moisture from the atmosphere, then the whole thing started to harden. Shards of silver and white formed in its center, spiking out. Blades of shimmering ice burst out from what had once been fire, her greatest weapon. Now rendered inert. Inconsequential.