Kekona nodded once. “Of course. It was a warning to stay away that has served us well. Looks like we might need another one. Oh, wait—”
“A warning?” Of course. That made sense then, why they hadn’t just killed him all those years ago. A walking, barely breathing, hideous-looking Keep Out sign. “Well,” Cat said, “he’s my father.”
A sound like a blazing, crackling fire emanated from the Chimeran male’s body. “You’re Ofarian?”
“Easy, Bane. Let me handle this. I know her.” Kekona reached out, took the big man’s arm and pushed him aside. Bane backed off toward the counter, where Shopgirl stood. When he was out of earshot, Kekona lowered her voice and asked Cat, “Did he send you?”
“No,” Cat replied, knowing she meant Griffin. “I offered to come. And I’m here alone. Please. I’d really like to speak with your chief.”
But Kekona had no stamped all over her, so Cat raised her voice enough for Bane and Shopgirl to hear. “War doesn’t mean death just on one side. I doubt you really want to risk your people’s lives, when there’s a chance they could be saved, too.”
“You have news?” Bane asked, inching forward.
“It’s why I’ve come to speak to your chief.” When Kekona didn’t move or answer, Cat unzipped her sweatshirt to show she had no weapons, then opened her empty hands. “They’re just words.”
Kekona smiled, but it wasn’t backed by the bravado Cat’d seen in that garage in White Clover Creek. In fact, there was a little bit of fear. “The chief wants to see you. Otherwise I would have had Akela over there send you back to them like Daddy. You’ll ride with us, but I should warn you, you’re a day too late.”
Cat raised an eyebrow. “Then why do you look so worried?”
Kekona opened her mouth to show a flame sparking in the back of her throat, then swiveled around and punched out of the store.
THIRTY-FIVE
The Chimerans’ vehicle picked and dug its way higher up the mountain and then slowly pitched back downward. When it stopped abruptly, Kekona told Cat, “You can take off the blindfold.”
Cat ripped the yellow bandanna off her eyes at the same moment Kekona and Bane opened their car doors. The sights and sounds assaulted her, filled her with dread.
Kekona had parked on the edge of a vast, oblong meadow. Around it rose the steep slopes of mountains, covered in all possible shades of green, closing them in. Shutting out the world. On those slopes clung rows and rows of small, tightly set houses and buildings, similar to how White Clover Creek had been built overlooking the main square, only far less affluent. Here no roads ran between the homes. There weren’t even cars, just footpaths. The air, though cool, reeked of sulphur and smoke, as though just over that ridge to the north sat the volcano that constantly spewed lava.
And on the flat of that great meadow, an army prepared for an offensive attack.
A whole field of warriors, five hundred at least, all as strong and lethal-looking as Kekona and Bane, moved and worked and shouted back and forth to one another. Some loaded up run-down buses from another era, piling in huge duffel bags. Families—numbering another five hundred, at least—lined the far end of the meadow. Women and men and children of all ages, watching, waiting for their time to say good-bye. Shoulders back, no tears.
The mobilization struck fear in Cat’s heart and made her breath lodge in her throat. It wasn’t just a threat anymore. This was real. It was happening.
To the west, a small pocket of male and female Chimeran warriors sparred. Half-naked, barefooted, their bronzed skin slick with sweat, they fought each other under the unrelenting sun. The grunts and roars of practiced battle soared over everything else, and Cat could hear death within the sounds. They fought with their hands—a combination of slugging it out and a nasty form of martial arts—and with fire.
Streams of orange and white and yellow shot from fighters’ lips, and their opponents dodged them gracefully. Others spit balls of flame into their hands and hurled them from powerful arms. It was almost balletic. It was a show, Cat realized, to display their might in front of the entire race. It was all choreographed, a ritual before battle.
Water would put out those fires. Water would always triumph over fire, unless there was simply too much fire to overcome. And if there were other races involved in the offensive. If Cat didn’t succeed here, Griffin would have to surrender in order to prevent an annihilation. But Griffin wasn’t the surrendering type.
“This way. The chief’s waiting for you.” Kekona nodded toward a tilting brick house painted white that hugged the edge of the meadow. It was larger than all the others, but still average by mainland U.S. standards.
Bane gave Cat’s shoulder a sharp shove, as if that’s all the contact with her he could stomach. As Kekona marched through the ranks, Chimerans everywhere stopped and turned and bowed, murmurs of “General,” trailing after her.
The whole of the Chimeran army started to follow Kekona, waves of huge, fire-wielding warriors swarming across the meadow to gather around the house. Even the sky seemed darker now, the clouds trailing, the sulphur odor intensifying, as though their anger had coalesced into ash and smoke and drifted upward. The Chimerans had no “bloodhound” powers like the Ofarians, but they knew Cat was different, that she didn’t belong here. All strangers were a threat.
A shallow stone veranda with crumbling posts circled the white house. Kekona disappeared through the front door, leaving Bane to loom at Cat’s back. She had no choice but to go inside, and stepped into the colder shadows as the murmur of the gathering Chimerans continued to rise. The house felt larger on the inside, its rooms spotted with white wicker furniture that had seen better days, and rippling white curtains hanging at the small, arched windows.
Bane pointed to a set of narrow steps curving up from the front room. “Upstairs.”
Kekona stomped up ahead of them. The close quarters and the creaking wood under Cat’s feet made her even more tense. Behind her, Bane’s shoulders brushed the walls. At the top, she pushed aside a curtain and stepped out onto a balcony overlooking the meadow. An ocean of dusky-skinned Chimerans spanned below…and they all looked up at her.
No, they looked to Kekona, who gave a mighty shout, then ran right for the balcony edge. Without slowing, without fear, she hopped up onto the railing. No hands, no overcompensation for bad balance, just pure muscle and raw, physical power. With a feral growl, she thrust one fist into the air. A short phrase in a language Cat didn’t recognize burst from Kekona’s mouth and echoed across the valley.
As one, nearly a thousand Chimerans roared their reply.
The entire population—children, too—dropped to a crouch, shouted something fierce and emotional in unison. They stamped one foot, then the other. Shouted something more, their faces twisting in determination. They shook their heads, chanting. Stomped again. They slapped one elbow, a thigh. The chanting rose and rose, and it was beautiful and petrifying and moving. All together, the Chimerans straightened, brought one fist across their chests, then the other, and bowed.
Cat couldn’t disguise her full-body shiver.
Kekona screamed something else in Chimeran, then jumped down from the railing, twisting to land facing Cat and Bane. She walked up to Cat wearing a satisfied smile.
“Keko. Enough.”
The new voice was low and gritty. Cat turned to the corner of the balcony from where it had come. A man, who could have been fifty or sixty or seventy, rose from a rickety wood chair. He, too, wore no shirt. No longer as trim and strong as the younger men on the field below, his power came through in his carriage and the calm confidence of his attention. His hair was still black as ink, dusted with only a few silver strands at his temple. He went to the balcony and raised a hand. The Chimerans lifted a thousand hands in response. Some blew tiny flames to dance on their fingertips. When the chief lowered his hand, his people sent up a joyous new cheer, and then started to disperse.
The man placed his hands on the balcony railing and did not face Cat. “
Why have you come?”
“Chief,” Cat said, bowing her head in the way Griffin had coached her. “I’ve come to explain Kekona’s capture. What she thought happened, did not. The basis for your whole offensive is incorrect.”
Now he turned, and the weight of his look made her feel heavy and small. “And who are you, to come to us like this? An Ofarian, begging for mercy for your people?” There it was: the loathing, the disgust.
“No, Chief. I’m not Ofarian.”
Kekona stomped forward. “Yes, you are, you lying—”
“I’m not.” Cat bit out. “I left them. I gave up my water magic. By choice. Griffin is my leader no more than you are.”
Bane and Kekona didn’t move a muscle. Cat held her breath. The chief ambled toward her. “So why are you here?”
Cat searched for the words Griffin had given her, but decided nothing would sound as true as her own.
“I’m new to this life, to this”—she waved a hand at the warriors and the unseen volcano and the hidden little town—“world. Two weeks ago I’d never even heard the word Secondary. I thought I was an emotionally messed-up orphan, nothing more. I’m here now because this is a stupid misunderstanding and both sides are being hotheaded. Sorry if no one’s ever put it in such blunt terms before, but I’m no politician. I’m no leader. Look, whatever Griffin did all those years ago to upset the Senatus is tearing him apart. He wants to fix his mistake, and he’s tried every way he knows how, but his wheels are spinning in place.”
“You just met him,” Kekona sneered. “You can’t know all that.”
Cat evenly met her fiery eyes. “And sometimes that’s all you need, to really know a person.”
Suddenly the memory of Xavier sprung up, twisting her heart in a vise, making the emptiness there achy and palpable. Her words must have meant something to Kekona, too, because the Chimeran looked away first.
“And you,” Cat rounded on the chief, “want to believe what you’ve always believed about the Ofarians. They’re a different people than what they once were, how you knew them before Gwen Carroway took down the old empire. I didn’t have to have been born into their society to know. I can see the pain on the surviving members’ faces, the frustration in their voices. They are trying.”
Kekona’s head snapped up. “Their leader kidnapped me.”
Cat shook her head and told Lea’s story. How the banished and neutered Ofarian woman had been trying to eradicate Ofarians by enflaming the Chimerans and, ultimately, the Senatus. “I know this because she told me herself after she captured me, too. Griffin had nothing to do with it, and Lea is sitting in his jail right now. You were there, Kekona. You saw him come, heard us talking. You saw Lea be taken into their custody.”
Kekona and the chief looked at one another so long Cat wondered if the Chimerans possessed some sort of telepathy. Bane stood off to the side, glowering.
“I didn’t see or hear anything to convince me,” said Kekona.
The chief opened his hands. “You expect us to just take your word for this?”
“No. I expect you to listen to someone who was actually there, in Michael’s house, when Kekona was brought in.”
Other than the widening of Kekona’s eyes, the Chimeran general didn’t move.
Cat reached into her bag and pulled out a little video device. “This is for you. Press play.”
The chief looked skeptical. “What’s on it?”
“Just press play.”
He did, Kekona and Bane crowding their leader on both sides. Even though Cat couldn’t see the screen, she could hear Sean Ebrecht’s voice rise up. She hadn’t been there when he’d offered the information. She hadn’t been there when he’d recorded this, as he’d cried over Michael and threw a chair across the room when talking about Lea. He told Lea’s story: how she was a lone wolf, and had been working with Michael for years.
The Chimeran leader looked up.
“All I’m asking, Chief,” Cat said, “is for you to stand down. For now. There is no need for loss of life on either side. Not over this. Call the Senatus together. Allow Griffin Aames to speak his piece and listen. He will listen, too, to whatever lectures you want to give. I promise you.”
The chief pursed his lips and shifted his focus to Kekona. “General?”
Fire flared across Kekona’s pupils. When the fire died, there was so much pain and humiliation and sorrow in that stare. Kekona finally looked away, and Cat was sure that she’d succeeded.
“General,” the chief pressed.
“Don’t be fooled by that, Uncle,” Kekona said. “Sean’s their prisoner. He’s a kid who’s used to being told what to do.”
“No—” Cat began, horrified.
But Kekona ignored her and leaped once more for the balcony rail. She assumed a wide stance on the narrow slat of wood, like the warriors on the ground had done earlier, and screamed something in Chimeran, the cords in her throat jutting out.
Everyone on the field paused in whatever they were doing and turned their faces up to the house again. Then, in a flurry, they rushed toward the waiting buses. Deploying.
Cat saw it all—the fighting, the scorched skin, the blood, the needless deaths. When it ended, all that Gwen and Griffin—and especially Xavier—had accomplished and sacrificed for, would be washed away. Gone, because of people being obtuse. Gone, because Griffin had once given unintentional offense to Secondary leaders.
Gone, because that offense had driven a massive wedge between Kekona and Griffin’s secret relationship.
Dear God…could all this be happening over a reason even stupider than a cultural misunderstanding?
Kekona hopped down, not looking at Cat as she made for the stairs. Bane fell in behind his general.
“Kekona,” she called, desperate. “I have no idea what happened between you and Griffin, but please don’t make this war some sort of ex-lover’s vengeance.”
At the top of the stairs, Kekona froze.
“What?” The chief’s roared surprise almost knocked Cat over.
“Sis.” Bane gripped Kekona’s arm and spun her around. “You didn’t.”
Kekona’s shoulders dropped, along with her dark eyes. She wouldn’t look at either her brother or her uncle.
Well, now, how about that? Cat had just let her namesake out of the bag.
She’d assumed that the Chimerans had known. She’d assumed that part of Griffin’s ostracizing had been due to Kekona’s revelation to her people of their affair.
The chief loomed over his niece. Sixty-plus years or not, he was, without a doubt, the most fear-inducing man in that valley. “Is this true? Are you involved with him?” Kekona lifted regretful, lovesick, forlorn eyes, and he amended the question. “Were you involved with him?”
The general said nothing.
Sparks danced across the chief’s eyes. “You and I will talk,” he told Kekona, pointing toward the great field, “after you call them off.”
THIRTY-SIX
One week later.
The Turnkorner Film Festival had ended. The movie stars had fled, the tourists trailing in their wake. The sidewalks of White Clover Creek sat empty. Wind whipped fresh powder from the rooftops and swirled it around the town that finally got to pull a blanket over its head and sleep after a two-week party. A few cars were parked along Waterleaf now, but most townies were likely at home, thrown over the couch in an exhausted heap. Mr. Traeger, however, was brushing snow from the front steps of the Tea Shoppe.
It was like Turnkorner had never happened and Xavier had gone back in time to the period when he’d lived anonymously and shrouded in demons. Only, in a vicious turn of events, he was allowed to keep the awful memories he’d made in the future.
Xavier had thought she’d be here.
The week-long trek from Nevada back to White Clover Creek had started with a despair so deep he contemplated chipping a hole in the frozen ground, burying himself, and just huddling there until spring. But a funny thing happened when he started moving
eastward. He thought about everything Cat had said to him in the Plant—had been forced to say to him, he was sure—and decided that digging a hole couldn’t possibly bring him any lower. The only way to go was up, and he actually allowed himself to hope.
By the time he’d hitchhiked his way across two states—using glamour to disguise himself as pregnant or disabled women, and to steal food, because he had no money or ID to speak of—he’d convinced himself that there had definitely been something wrong when Cat had shoved him away, and the problem hadn’t been him. When he got back to Colorado, he told himself, she would be waiting for him.
But she wasn’t.
There was no reservation for her at the Margaret. Or any other hotel or motel within the town limits.
There were no new tracks in the unshoveled snow leading up to his house.
In a daze, he got his key from under the thyme pot in the greenhouse and went inside his cold, silent home. He stared at the red plastic phone on the wall and released a howl of frustration. Why couldn’t he have forced himself to join modern society and signed up for something as basic as caller ID? Maybe she’d tried to call and he hadn’t answered. Maybe she was waiting for him to call her.
He snatched the receiver from the cradle and stabbed out Cat’s cell phone number. Disconnected.
He sank onto one of the chairs around the kitchen table.
Disconnected. That pretty much said it all. It hadn’t rung and rung, like she’d left it on too long and it had run out of juice. Disconnected meant I don’t want to be found. Disconnected meant The people I’ve joined don’t want me to be found either.
He could call Gwen or Griffin, but he didn’t want to hear it from their lips, too, that Cat had made her choice and left him. For the Ofarians.
All that shit he’d convinced himself of on the way home was just that: shit. He’d been right, what he’d said to her over that radio. Maybe they had made her say those things to him, but in the end, she hadn’t been willing to fight for them.
A Taste of Ice (The Elementals) Page 35