Fires of Man

by Dan Levinson

  “No,” Cha’a’ni said.

  “You could die if you don’t get help,” she said.

  “My place . . . here.” He shifted his head slightly so he could meet Faith’s eyes. She saw the conviction in them, and knew then that he would not be convinced. “Tell me . . . the pyramid,” he managed.

  Blinking back tears, she started at the beginning. She told him about the fascinating sconces. She described the mural in the room with the columns. She spoke of the wondrous golden door. She did not mention what had happened with Durban; he didn’t need to hear such things. She detailed her magnificent discoveries in the chambers beneath the pyramid—the hot springs, the artifacts, what she had puzzled out about the place’s purpose.

  She told him everything she could.

  After a time, Cha’a’ni closed his eyes, though a faint smile remained on his face as if he were still listening. It was only when his hand went limp that Faith ended her monologue.

  She looked at his face—pale, yet peaceful.

  He had been her friend. She kissed his cheek and found it had already begun to turn cold. “Shi’ala,” she murmured. Goodbye.

  When she stood, the EMT gave her a questioning look.

  She shook her head. It was over.

  She thought she should shed more tears, curse the heavens, shake her fist at the sky. Instead, she felt only pervading numbness. This had been the hardest day of her life. Maybe she was in shock. Her stomach growled a reminder that she hadn’t eaten all day, save for Cha’a’ni’s stew that morning, and the thought of that final meal they’d shared made her even less hungry.

  As she headed out of the hut, the paramedic following her, Ka’pua began to sing.

  It was a song for the dead, Faith knew, to see them safely to the other side. She shivered. All she wanted to do was go back to her tent and sleep for a year, sleep until everything was better. Right now she could barely support her own weight.

  Outside, U’go waited, arms folded. When he saw her, she ducked his gaze. He immediately rushed into the hut.

  Seconds later, his loud wail erupted from within. The gathered tribesmen seemed to understand the sound’s significance, because they ceased their chant and began to moan as well, beating their chests with their fists. Faith pushed her way through the grieving crowd. The bitter coldness of the air was nothing compared to the cold she felt within.

  U’go’s voice suddenly rang out behind her. “That which dies can live again,” he bellowed in Galuak. On any other day Faith would have been fascinated to watch the ascendance of a new chief, but not today. “The spirit of our people lives on in me. I am Cho’u’go! I am your chief!” The cry from the tribesmen grew louder, sadness and celebration expressed in a sustained note. “Now, my first business. Bring me the doctor.”

  The crowd went silent.

  Faith froze. Had she heard him right?

  Large, callused hands turned her around and prodded her back toward U’go—no, Cho’u’go—who waited in front of the chieftain’s hut.

  The new chief of the Galuak had hatred in his eyes. It was only now that Faith saw the cruel cast to his face, eyes deep and sunken, nose viciously hooked over a mouth drawn into a frown of displeasure.

  “You and your people are banished from our lands,” Cho’u’go said.

  Suddenly, Faith was sitting in the snow. Her knees had given out.

  Her brain tried to process what was happening. This was wrong. Wrong! She was so stunned that she let one of the tribesmen haul her to her feet.

  “It was a mistake to let you come here,” Cho’u’go continued. This brought disgruntled murmurs from the crowd at this subtle condemnation of Cha’a’ni’s actions, but no more. Then he said, “It is your fault our beloved leader was taken from us!”

  “No,” Faith protested hoarsely, finding her voice at last. “One of your own people did this! Not me!”

  “It never would have happened if not for you,” Cho’u’go said.

  The crowd’s muttering began to sound like agreement. The tide was turning against her.

  “This is important work,” she said. “Important for the entire world. Don’t you want everyone to see what your ancestors built?” She raised her voice loud enough so those gathered could hear her.

  “What concern is that of ours?” Cho’u’go retorted. “We have no interest in your world.”

  “It’s what Cha’a’ni wanted,” she said. “Please. He wished—”

  “I am the voice of our tribe,” Cho’u’go interrupted. “My wishes are all that matters. Tell your people to pack their things. I want them gone within the week. Anything you leave behind is ours.” Then the new chieftain of the Galuak people turned and went back into the hut.

  The crowd began to disperse. Faith hardly noticed. Every now and then, someone touched her on the shoulder or whispered a reassuring word. But nothing penetrated. She stood there, staring at the hut, feeling utterly lost.

  It was all slipping away from her.

  Three years of work, over.

  A close friend and confidante, gone.

  Her confidence, shattered.

  And where the hell was Tiberian when she needed him most?

  When she arrived back at her tent, it felt like years since she had last seen her desk, her bookshelves, her bed. She stripped off her cold-weather clothing and burrowed under the covers.

  She could not face her team, her workers, not today.

  There had to be something she could do to stop this!

  She knew that if she fought for it, if Calchis deemed the site important enough, they would ensure the dig continued, by force if necessary. But Faith couldn’t desecrate Cha’a’ni’s memory like that, couldn’t destroy the life of an entire tribe.

  She tried to tell herself that things would work out.

  They had to.

  But she knew there was nothing to be done.

  32

  KAY

  “We have to talk,” Jackie said.

  Kay hung up on him, again.

  At first he’d tried calling on his own phone, leaving messages, filling up her missed call log and voicemail. Even sending her texts. Now he was resorting to unfamiliar numbers to reach her. She would have to start screening her calls.

  She wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. Did he really think her so naïve that she would just forget what had happened, allow him back into her life? After she ignored him the first ten times, she’d thought he would have taken the hint.

  After the previous night’s disaster, Kay decided she was through with relationships. Over it. Done. Such entanglements brought only suffering.

  As she went through her day—leading physical training with her squad, riding out on a normal six-hour patrol—she tried not to think of the night before. She wanted to wipe it from her memory. She wanted to be in control of her emotions. She wanted not to feel things so goddamn deeply.

  To think of last night made her feel fragile, and that she could not bear.

  By the time she was finished with the day’s responsibilities, she found another string of missed calls waiting for her.

  God, what was wrong with him?

  She had dinner in the mess hall—an unsatisfying meal of chicken breast, creamed spinach, and a whole wheat roll. That’s when she decided she could not be cooped up on base any longer. Beer and a paperback; that was the sort of respite she needed. She returned to her quarters to pick out a book from her shelf. She chose a crime paperback, Midnight Killing. The back cover said it was about a serial killer stalking the city streets and the female detective who was trying to stop him.

  Kay could see herself as a cop in another life. Crime-fighting possessed a certain mystique that tickled her imagination. She had wanted to be a police officer for years after Tiberian had been shot. She had thought that, had she only owned a gun, she would have been able to shoot the bad guy and save her brother. That had been a frequent daydream for her: taking out the robber, saving Tibe, being his hero for once.
>
  A futile daydream.

  When Kay emerged from the underground facility, she headed out through the front gates of the compound and walked southeast. She thought about Brewsky’s, but Jackie knew that place. Instead, she headed toward a beer garden called Caveat. It was an establishment she’d often frequented with Nyne, but Nyne was gone, so the place was hers.

  Caveat could be overlooked if one didn’t know where to find it; a set of unassuming steps led down from street level to a quaint wooden door framed by light bulbs in old-fashioned iron brackets. A plaque next to the door read, in archaic lettering, “Let the buyer beer-ware.” It was a terrible pun, but it still made her smile.

  She reached for the door, but then heard someone approach behind her. She knew who it was by the scent of his cologne.

  She spun. “Stalking me now?”

  Jackie was nonplussed. “You wouldn’t return my calls,” he said. “What else was I supposed to do?”

  “Leave me alone,” she said. “That’s what.”

  “I need to talk to you,” he said.

  She ignored him and went for the door handle. He put his hand on hers. She shook him off. “Listen,” she said, “if you don’t—”

  “I’ll follow you in,” he said. “Make a big scene.”

  “I could call the police,” she said. He was really starting to piss her off. She wanted nothing more than to lay him out flat, but she was trying so damn hard not to give in to that roiling sea of emotion.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll be gone before they get here. Look, all I want is a chance to speak with you. Please.”

  “I don’t owe you a thing,” she said.

  “You don’t. I’m asking. Just five minutes. It’s urgent.”

  She gauged him. He wore a sharp gray wool coat over a V-neck shirt and jeans. For someone so desperate to talk to her, he looked remarkably put-together. The obsessive phone calls had brought to mind an image of Jackie unwashed and eating ice cream in his underwear, dead to the world, inconsolable. That fantasy had been so satisfying, and seeing him now ruined it completely.

  She sighed. “Five minutes,” she agreed. “On one condition.”

  “Name it,” he said.

  “I don’t ever want to see or hear from you again.” There was a part of her that wanted to take that back, but she shoved it down. She had to cut this lying scumbag out of her life forever.

  Something flashed across Jackie’s face at her words, but a moment later his visage was a mask of infuriating placidity. Had he actually been upset to hear her say that?

  “Deal,” he said.

  “So,” she said, “talk.”

  A young couple came down the steps behind them, arm-in-arm, looking irritatingly delighted. Jackie stepped aside and let them pass. “Not here,” he said.

  Kay stifled her exasperation. “Where?” she asked.

  “Follow me,” he said.

  He led her back up the stairs from Caveat and down the block. He slowed his pace so they could walk side-by-side. She slowed even further, making clear what she thought of being next to him, as if that wasn’t obvious already. He took the hint, shrugged, then quickened his step again, letting her play catch up.

  Asshole!

  Calling and calling her and even going so far as to track her down, and now acting like for all the world he didn’t care if she was there or not. She was doing him a favor. He damn well better care!

  God, the gall, the fucking arrogance!

  Jackie stopped at the mouth of a shadowy side street, briefly glanced back to meet her eyes, then ducked into it.

  Kay hesitated.

  She didn’t relish the thought of following anyone into a darkened alley. And she had to remember who Jackie was: a liar. What if this was a trap? What if her knowledge compromised whatever he was doing, and he wanted to remove her from the picture? She reminded herself that, for all their supposed familiarity, she really did not know him or what he was capable of. The Jackie she had met was a fabrication. She had to stop thinking of him as someone she knew, as an ex-lover, and start thinking of him as a total stranger.

  She grabbed hold of her power and stepped into the gloom.

  Jackie waited for her halfway down the street, past large steel dumpsters filled with reeking refuse. She did her best to ignore the stench. As she neared him, he reached behind his back for something.

  A gun?

  Her heart leaped into her throat. She channeled her ability, magnifying her speed, her reflexes. Jackie’s movements slowed to a crawl and she was forced to wait as his hand came back into view with agonizing slowness.

  He held a white envelope.

  Kay breathed a sigh of relief. She let the acceleration evaporate; her body returned to normal speed with the usual curious sensation, as if she was being lightly pulled by the air around her. She did not release her power. She walked over to Jackie.

  “This is for you,” he said.

  Cautiously, she accepted the envelope and opened it. Inside, she found a wad of cash.

  “Now I—” he began.

  She hurled the envelope at him. Orion marks spilled out. Emotion had won out. Screw it.

  “Am I a whore now, you fuck? Or is this a payoff to keep my mouth shut? God, every time I think you couldn’t be more of a prick, you just go and prove me wrong, don’t you?”

  “You’re way off-base,” he said. He bent down to scoop up the envelope and loose bills.

  She stalked away from him, toward the mouth of the alley, but he jogged up and blocked her path. “Move or I’ll move you,” she said.

  “You’ve got the wrong idea,” he said.

  “Move,” she repeated.

  “Would you just fucking listen to me?” he shouted.

  Kay blinked, stunned. This was the first time he’d raised his voice to her. Deep down, beneath all the rage and hurt was the part of her that still wanted him. For a moment, that part took hold. Nyne had never been willing to stand up to her. He’d come close, that awful night at Hearth, but the only one who had ever really put her in her place was Tibe, when she was a girl.

  She struggled, wishing her feelings for Jackie away. She wanted to hate him, to despise him with everything she had!

  Why couldn’t she do that?

  Jackie capitalized on her silence and thumbed through the contents of the envelope. He removed a driver’s license with Kay’s face, from a picture he must have taken with his phone, and the name “Angela Lindon.” He handed it to her. “You’re in danger,” he said. “You have to leave town.”

  “I have to?” she asked.

  “I want you to,” he amended. “My client is a very ruthless individual, and until my business is done in Grisham, you could get hurt. I don’t want that.”

  Kay grimaced. She still couldn’t believe she’d let herself get wrapped up with him. Even if she hadn’t known better at the start, she should have realized something was up when she’d seen Jackie talking to that suspicious man in black.

  Still, she was a soldier. A psion! She had her pride; she damn well wasn’t going to flee. And she sure as hell didn’t trust him. “I can’t believe a single word you say.”

  “It’s the truth. I swear. And maybe my word doesn’t mean much to you, but you have to understand . . . If anything happens to you . . . I can’t protect you if you stay.”

  “I don’t need protecting,” she said.

  To her satisfaction, he did not deny that. “I know you don’t like anyone telling you what to do. I like that about you. But just this once, I want you to listen.”

  Kay seethed. In one breath he had called her stubborn, verging on mulish, and in the next tried to twist it like it was some sort of compliment. She wanted nothing more than to tell him to take his cash and fake ID and shove it, but that would only prove his point.

  She took a breath, counted to five, and weighed her options.

  She wouldn’t run. It was out of the question. She had run only once in her life, on that day marked so indelibly
in her memory, when Tibe’s blood had stained the snow. And she’d sworn never to do so again.

  But what would she tell Jackie? She was sick of his hounding.

  The only choice, she thought, was to tell him what he wanted to hear. It would be justice, in a way, to deceive him.

  Yes, that was exactly what she would do.

  Kay took the envelope from Jackie and turned it over in her hands, pretending to consider. She had to make it convincing if she hoped to con him.

  “How long would I have to go for?” she asked.

  “A week,” he said. “Probably less, but a week to be safe.”

  “You know if I just disappear, I’ll never get a commission. I could be demoted. This could ruin everything I’ve been working for,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Are you really?” she asked. “I’m not so sure. I could still be a pawn in your little game, whatever that is.”

  “What we had,” he said, “wasn’t completely real. To claim otherwise, well . . . it would insult your intelligence.” He smiled, and it was radiant even in the gloom. “But it . . . meant something to me. It did. I know trust isn’t exactly something you’re willing to give me right now, but . . . there it is.”

  “I wish I could believe you,” she said.

  She meant it.

  If only she could take him at his word, she might be able to stop being so angry with herself.

  “Too little too late, I guess,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll see each other again. If we’d met under different circumstances . . .”

  “Forget it,” she said. “I won’t miss you.”

  That was a lie, much as she wished it wasn’t.

  “Can’t imagine you would.” He sounded disappointed, of all things. “Bye, Kay.”

  “Goodbye,” she said, “whoever you are.”

  He stood there a moment, watching her, as if waiting for some final parting gesture. She did not budge. He sighed, and left.

  Kay waited, wanting to be certain that he was gone. Then she tossed the envelope in the nearby dumpster, cash and all.