The chief still watched his warriors, but now from behind the small kitchen window. He whirled when Griffin came barreling through the door. For a brief moment, fear flashed across Chief’s face, but then the Chimeran seemed to remember he wielded his greatest weapon again, and his chest expanded ever so slightly. Griffin wasn’t scared.
He wore a shirt, the tips of Keko’s handprint peeking out from behind the top two open buttons.
“You are a coward,” Griffin said.
The worst name one could call a Chimeran. A tiny yellow spark lit the chief’s eyes, but he said nothing, because he knew he’d been called out.
Griffin advanced, the kitchen far too small for two men of such size. The chief retreated, his heel catching the cabinet below the sink. His gaze darted into the shadows of the house at Griffin’s back.
“Where’s Keko?” asked the chief.
Griffin sneered. “Do you care? Now that she’s given you everything you wanted?” Another step forward. “Your fire. Your power. Your leadership.”
The chief reached up and wrapped a protective hand around the Queen’s black rock that dangled around his neck. “I . . . I am grateful to her.”
“No, you’re not. You think she owed you this. After how she got involved with me. After the almost war. This all worked out so very well for you, didn’t it?”
Chief’s fingers tightened around the rock as if Griffin might snatch the stupid thing away.
“I came back here to tell you two things.”
“I don’t have to listen,” Chief said.
Griffin laughed. “True. You could leave, but I would follow, and then you’d have to explain to your people why an Ofarian is in the valley. Or you could call out to one of them right now to have me removed, but I get the feeling that neither Bane nor Ikaika would comply. And to any other warrior you’d have to explain my presence.”
Chief knew he was trapped. His hand released the rock.
“Point number one.” Griffin circled around closer to the counter near the ancient refrigerator. “I gave my word to Keko that I would never speak of this disease, and I intend to uphold it. So even though you think your secret is safe, that you can sit up here on your false throne with the majority of your people gazing up at you in ignorance, I know your shame. An Ofarian. And that shame does not lie with a sickness you had no control over, but the fact that you hid it from your own people while banishing others, and let a brave woman take your fall.”
“You don’t understand our culture.”
“No, I understand it very well. And I learned about it from someone who loves it far more than you.”
Chief’s hard glare shifted to barely veiled guilt, but it was still just a shade of the vulnerability he’d worn when Keko had placed her hand on him.
“My second point,” Griffin went on, “is that Keko could have easily become Queen. You know this. She knows this. But she wanted to protect innocents from the same kind of scorn you threw down upon her. It amazes me that you lump in people who were stricken with such a terrible thing along with someone who broke kapu and tried to start a war. Keko knew what she did was wrong and tried to help her people to make up for it, and you treated them exactly the same. You’re lucky, you’re so goddamn lucky, that she is as forgiving and noble as she is.”
Griffin hated the chief’s unwavering silence almost as much as he hated replaying the image of Keko disappearing into the earth.
“You were there,” Griffin said, “when Aya made the threats against Keko, about hunting her. About punishing her. You should know that Aya’s made good on those threats.”
The Chimeran’s body sagged. “What?”
“Aya came here and took Keko. Into the earth. So your dirty little secret is safe forever and you won’t ever have to worry about Keko becoming Queen. Though you may want to pray that the disease doesn’t come back. Hope you’re happy. And fuck you.”
Chief’s hands came to his hips and his head bowed low. “What do you want me to do?”
But it wasn’t a pure, honest question. Chief didn’t really want to know what he could do. He just wanted to ask for the sake of asking, so he could look like he had no other choice but to stand behind what he’d already done.
“I don’t care what you do. I just want Keko back. So that’s what I’m going to do.” Griffin started for the back door, because he said what he’d had to say and standing there staring at the chief wouldn’t get anything done. He had to get back to San Francisco, clear his head, think. There was an answer somewhere—
A rumble started outside, low and consistent enough that Griffin assumed it to be approaching thunder, growing louder and more intense with every passing second. Except that the day was cloudless and the sun shone brightly on the valley.
With a sense of foreboding and a thick tug on his signature awareness, he went back into the kitchen because the sound seemed to be coming from the front of the house. The chief had heard it, too, and was leaning on the counter looking out the smudged window over the sink. Griffin joined him.
Not thunder, but movement out on the meadow. A mass of Chimeran bodies shifting and marching in a mob way that was not militaristic or orderly. The warriors surged across the grass toward the chief’s house, strong arms raised, mouths open, little bursts of fire and the resultant plumes of smoke lifting to the sky. They were following someone. A big Chimeran male strode at point, determination and confidence in his step. And it was not Bane.
This man’s right arm ended at the elbow.
Makaha led the Chimeran crowd, whose fervor Griffin couldn’t distinguish as mocking or encouraging. Makaha stalked toward the house, chin down, legs strong, shoulder-length hair flapping behind him. He stopped just beyond the front terrace and stared hard into the kitchen window. The Chimerans fanned out on both sides. Though half of Makaha’s arm was gone, he was no less massive, no less formidable. His eyes were nearly consumed with threatening flame, so much so Griffin only saw gold and orange, no black or white. When Makaha opened his mouth, it was not fire that screamed out from his throat.
“Griffin Aames!” bellowed Makaha. “Leader of the Ofarians! I know you are inside.”
At mention of the Ofarians, a great murmur erupted from the Chimeran crowd. Anger mixed with confusion over discovering one of their opposing race to be in the valley.
Beside Griffin, the chief gasped.
“What’s going on?” Griffin asked, mystified as to how Makaha could have possibly known he was here.
It was Makaha, not the chief, who responded, lifting his severed arm and screaming at the house. “Griffin Aames! I, Makaha, of Chimeran descent and born of fire, challenge you!”
Griffin’s hesitation was not made of fear. The moment between the issue of the challenge and the movement of his feet toward the front door was packed with everything Keko had told him or intimated about the Chimeran way of life—and so much that she had not. Everything had to be earned, she’d said, through physical challenge. Respect, one’s position in society, redemption . . . everything.
Makaha—like Keko—had been banished to the Common House. The Chimeran warrior’s only way out would be to challenge the man who’d disfigured him and caused the shame in the first place. But what were the chances of that man ever actually entering this hidden valley? Practically none. Until now.
As Griffin exited out onto the front terrace, in plain view of the meadow crowded with muscular, fire-wielding Chimerans, he understood. He got why Keko had seized her opportunity to go after the Source when she did. When a Chimeran’s chance came along, they grabbed it with fists or fire, and did not let go until they’d given it their all.