The Last Twilight (33 page)

Amiri grunted, not entirely sympathetic. “What did she do?”

His father grimaced. “She put me inside your head as punishment. I experienced everything you did. All your thoughts and fears. Fourteen years inside your mind, cub.”

“Impossible.

“So naοve.” A bitter smile touched his mouth. “If it makes you feel better, I learned a great deal. You…raised me … to be a different man.”

It was difficult to breathe. “You did not search me out.”

“But I did. When you were captured by the Consortium, I went to find you, to rescue you.” His gaze turned distant, his voice dropping to a whisper. “They caught me, cub. And when I refused to cooperate, they took my woman, and they took my daughter.” He held out his leathery hands. “But now, freedom.”

Amiri could not stand this. He could not bear to hear more. But he looked into his father’s eyes and said, “Do you hate me? For what you endured?”

“No,” breathed Aitan. “You are my son, and I love you.”

Amiri looked away, stricken. His father clapped him on his leg. “Those friends of yours are good people. I will work with them, for a time. And then, when I am done, I will take A’sharia back to Kenya. Perhaps the boy, too. Your sister is fond of him. He makes a good pet for her.”

Amiri gave him a sharp look. His father laughed, standing. “Come home to Kenya, cub. When your heart can stand it again. There is no need to fear. Not with me, or that woman at your side.”

“I know,” Amiri said. “I know what she is to me.”
And what you are now, as well.

Aitan sighed. “I am glad you never listened.”

And that, combined with declarations of affection and mind-reading, was enough to leave Amiri quite rattled, as though the world had teetered and fallen, leaving him still floating in the sky, casting for an anchor.

He went to hunt for Rikki.

She passed pregnant women standing in the doorways of their new rooms. Talking with each other, holding hands. Laughing. Sweeping away with their voices the miasma of all that was dark and wrong with this facility. As though pain had never existed here, and that something new was in its place. Possibilities.

Rikki did not know what to make of that. Women stopped her in the hall, bellies round and large. They wanted to ask her questions about these new people. Whether they were truly safe. Rikki answered them as best she could, given that her French was rusty and she had little to give. Safe, yes. She was certain of that. But nothing else.

And that felt wrong to her. She wanted to be in the thick of it. She was a doctor; but more, she was one of these women. They had been her future. Broker had promised that, more or less. Just another experiment. What affected them, would affect her. And their children.

So what now? You give up your career? Everything you’ve worked for? To do what?

Rikki was not sure. But she knew one thing—she could not go back to the way things had been. Not after everything she had seen and done. Moving backwards never did any good. There was no such thing as time travel, and clinging to the past just made the heart sore.

So you help,
she told herself.
You make a difference. Same as always. That much won’t change.

No. Not on her life.

She found Jean-Claude in the cafeteria. He sat by the window. She thought Elena must have done something for him. Nothing major, but the swelling had disappeared, and his nose appeared less broken. Rikki kicked out a chair and plopped herself down. Stared, for a moment, at the plate of half-eaten rice and beans he had pushed aside. Her stomach growled. He nudged it toward her. Rikki grabbed his spoon and took a bite. It was good.

“‘So,” she said, after several minutes of strained silence, “you did try to warn me.”

“I had no idea it would be this,” he said, his eyes still bloodshot. “Just rumors. Doctors going missing. Corruption.”

“And then they came for you.” Rikki put down the spoon. “Your family?”

“Safe. They wanted only me.”

“Jean-Claude—”

“I know,” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know,” he said again, gently, reaching out take her hand. “But I am your friend, Rikki Kinn. I saved your life once, yes?”

“Yes.” She squeezed his fingers, and a faint smile touched his mouth. He raised up his arm, and settled his hand more securely over hers. Dug his elbow into the table.

“You will not beat me this time,” he said. “And if I win, you will tell me what this place is. All of it. I am so very confused. And if
you
win, you will do the same.”

“A girl has to have some secrets, Jean-Claude.”

He hesitated. “How good it is to see you smile.”

Good to have a reason to smile,
she thought, and slammed his hand—very gently—into the table. At which point he cried foul, laughing, and they gave up the arm wrestling for quieter talk, which was censored and careful and gave nothing away that could prove dangerous to her new acquaintances. She did not like lying to Jean-Claude, though. Not when he seemed to know she was doing just that.

Rikki eventually excused herself. Her heart hurt. She went to find Amiri.

And she did. Soon after, walking fast down the hall. He smiled when he saw her—almost, she thought, with relief—and grabbed her hand, tugging her close for a hard long kiss that took away all her pain and confusion.

“Come,” he whispered in her ear. “I want to run away.”

“Where no one will find us?”

“We will be ghosts,” he breathed, kissing her mouth. “We will feast on sunlight and the hearts of shadows.”

He led her outside, and she felt like a kid again as he pulled her into the forest. The world was safe with Amiri; the danger, the horror melted away into something small and distant that could not touch her, that had never touched her.

They ran until they were breathless, and leaned against the trunk of a fat tree, impossibly ancient and thick with bulging branches and twisting vines. Good climbing. A better place to hide from the world. Rikki kicked off her shoes, took a deep breath, and jumped, grabbing the low branch. It bent under her weight, but not much, and it was easy enough to swing up, just like the high bar. Markovic and his training. She missed the old man. Almost as much as her father. But the pain was easier now. The loneliness was gone.

She looked down only once, and found Amiri chasing her. Graceful, easy. Fast. He passed her easily, but it was still a race, and she danced up the tree, scaling it like the colobus monkeys screaming at her, or the full-throated birds flashing wingtips in the corners of her eyes. Her body moved entirely by instinct, and when Amiri looked down and met her gaze she could not fight the fierce grin that spread across her face. Laughter bubbled up her throat.

“You,” he said, smiling. “You are such a surprise, Rikki Kinn.”

He reached down and pulled her up until they stood together in the canopy. Her bare feet dug into the smooth bark of a wide branch, thicker than the bumper of a jeep. Better than any balance beam.

Amiri stood in front of her, perched with ease near the trunk, his face half-hidden in shadows and leaves so that when he looked at her it was, for a moment, like seeing the face of some golden-eyed apparition: too elegant, too wild, to be anything but magic. The heat of his gaze made her dizzy, and she had to glance down, away, so that she felt like she was flying, hovering, caught in a web of air and light. The view was incredible; lush, rolling.

When she looked back at Amiri, she found his gaze unflinching, warm and golden and so full of life she could not help but reach out. Her fingers grazed his chest—his smooth, perfect chest—and he gathered her close, his hand slipping around her back; a gentle vise, an anchor. Forty feet above the ground and he made it seem like they were standing free and easy with the earth hard beneath their feet. She forgot to breathe, but managed enough of a voice to whisper, “You’re the first person in years I’ve been sure of, Amiri.”

His chest rumbled. “Who were the others?”

“My father. My brother. My coach. All of them dead now. The only people who ever loved me.”

“I love you.” Amiri’s arm slid up the trunk of the tree, gripping the branch above their heads. “Shape-shifters only take one true mate. Something the heart knows. And it knew you, Rikki. From the start.”

Words to fly by, words to live by, like riding a rush of pure energy, straight from the sun into her heart. But for a moment—just one—it felt almost too good. It made her afraid.

“My mother left,” she found herself saying, very quietly. “I don’t know where she is. If she’s still alive. My father was murdered, Markovic…lung cancer. My brother, Frankie, killed in an accident.” Rikki stopped, closing her eyes. “I thought I had found him again, you know. When I saw Eddie for the first time. It was like having my brother back…and then losing him all over again. And I couldn’t do a thing to save either one of them.”

“Eddie is fine,” Amiri said quietly. “He
will
be fine. You helped save him.”

She shook her head. “Everyone I’ve ever loved has been taken from me. If anything ever happened to you—”

He placed his hand over her mouth. “And me? How do you think I feel?”

She tugged his hand away. “You’ve lost, too. In the lab, what Broker said…about the women you’ve loved…”

Tension strained his body; his expression flattened, far too neutral. “Only one woman. Her name was Angelique. She was the first woman I ever loved. Our affair was casual to her, but not to me. I wanted her to be mine, and I thought if she knew me, all of me, that it would …”

“Awe her?” Rikki supplied, when he said nothing else. “Make her realize just how special your love is, because of the man you are, that you aren’t the kind to trust your heart lightly?”

Amiri stared. “Am I so transparent?”

“No.” Rikki kissed the corner of his mouth. “But that’s how
I
feel.”

“Ah,” he breathed, smiling. “So you like me, just a little?”

She shoved at his chest, laughing. “Don’t change the subject.”

His smile faded. “There is little to change. She rejected me. She called me a monster, a demon, even a sorcerer. She threatened to expose me. I was heartbroken, frightened. I turned to my father for advice. He went out that night and killed her.”

Rikki felt sucker punched. “What?”

“He murdered her. Then threatened to do the same to any woman who ever learned the truth about me. I believed him, and I ran away. And though he was not near, I… took the lesson to heart. I stayed far from women, and if I kept a female friend, she was always old or married. I did not want the temptation. I did not want to suffer such heartache again—or the possibility that another woman might die because of me.”

She was still trying to wrap her head around the idea that his father—Aitan, that man who had helped save them—could do something so cold, so ruthless. “How long ago was that?”

“Fourteen years,” Amiri said. “A long drought. I hardly understand how I survived, knowing what I do now.”

“And what’s that?”

Soft hunger filled his eyes. When he smiled, she could feel the predator in him, the danger. That sweet, hot, danger. He grabbed the back of her neck, his fingers sliding into her hair, and he pulled slightly, just enough to tilt her head so that her neck lay exposed.

He kissed her throat. He kissed her jaw. He lay his mouth over hers and kissed her tenderly, so soft and light she pushed against him for more. But he kept her hungry, aching, and whispered, “You ask for an impossible answer, Rikki Kinn. Better to pretend you have been blind all your life, and now can see the sun.”

“I
can
see it,” she said, and pulled back just enough to look at him, and marvel. A light sheen of sweat covered his brown skin; his limbs were loose, powerful; and when she met his gaze his eyes were bright, so intense her breath caught. He stared back at her with naked pleasure, as though she was a wonder, a mystery. And she felt like one; the entire world was her own private fairy tale, scattershot with magic.

The sun was setting, casting shadows etched in silver. Amiri held her close, and they stood on the branches of the ancient tree and watched the world swallow fire, followed by the hush of twilight, the first gasp of stars.

And though for years she had convinced herself that nothing was more important than a lonely heart, the thought of going back to that, even in the face of terrible loss, was a cruel and indefensible joke. Rikki had been living without living. She had been passing through life with her soul in a cage.

And Amiri, she realized, had done the same. Lonely hearts, frightened of their shadows.

But now they were free.

“It’s a whole new beginning,” Rikki said.

“Indeed,” Amiri replied, and they stood above the world, and watched the twilight gather life.