Guardian of the Storm (3 page)

It occurred to her that it might not be Kiran’s campfire at all, but she knew it was most likely his—and what choice did she have anyway?

The smell of food lightened her steps when she was close to flagging. Her stomach growling in anticipation, she hurried onward. Ahead, she saw a jumble of ragged shapes that told her she was nearing an outcropping of rock similar to the one she’d lived on for months. A couple of stunted, scraggly trees dotted the mound and even a few emaciated bushes and she realized this must be a far more luxurious watering hole than hers—which was probably why she hadn’t seen a soul in months. The little pool she’d staked claim to was hardly worthy of any Niahian going out of their way for.

Caution overcame her as she reached the first of the rocks, stubbing her toes and sending loose scrabble in every direction. She stopped, listening. When she heard no sounds indicating that anyone had heard her clumsy arrival, she moved more carefully among the rocks, making her way toward the glow of the campfire and finally stopping behind a rock to peer over it.

Kiran was sitting beside the fire. What unnerved her, however, was that he appeared to be looking straight at her. Her heart skidded to a rough halt, then banged against her rib cage. Before she could dismiss it as pure imagination, however, he spoke.

“I should not have called you a grat. You are as clumsy as a hrzog.”

Tempest glared at him, tempted to stay where she was considering his nasty remark. The hrzog was a rodent, and virtually blind and deaf, depending on its nearly impenetrable armor-plated hide to protect it from predators.

She stood up. “How did you know it was me?”

“I smelled you.”

“I don’t stink!” Tempest snapped indignantly as she stepped from behind the rock where she’d been hiding. She might be dusty—it was impossible not to be on such a planet—but she bathed regularly.

His lips twitched. “I did not say you smelled badly, only that I smelled you.”

Tempest frowned. “It’s the same thing … isn’t it?”

“It is not.”

She was fairly certain she’d been insulted just the same, but she went to the campfire anyway, plunking her—his bundle down and then sitting on top of it. He nodded. “There is water there.”

Swallowing convulsively, Tempest leapt to her feet and rushed toward it.

“Do not drink too fast or you will be sick.”

She ignored him. She’d survived this long without him in the desert. She knew she could only allow herself a little water. Once she’d drank a little, his previous remark came back to her, however, and she splashed water over herself in a half hearted attempt at a bath. She was shivering when she returned to the campfire. He glanced at her and then looked away again just as quickly and frowned.

Tempest stared at him in confusion and finally looked down at herself. A blush rose in her cheeks when she realized she’d soaked the cloth tied around her breasts. Wet, it was nearly transparent and worse, her nipples were standing out like little pebbles.

She moved a little further from the firelight, pulling the wet fabric from her skin and sloughing the water off her arms and legs the best she could. She felt like a block of ice by the time she was dry enough to feel comfortable about moving closer to the fire again. Without looking at her, Kiran handed her a plate of food.

“You should not have followed me.”

Tempest looked down at her food for several moments, uncomfortable. She couldn’t very well say she hadn’t been following him. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t want to be alone anymore.”

He shook his head. “I would have come back for you. Where I travel … I must go alone.”

Tempest gaped at him. “You would?” She thought it over for several moments and felt a surge of anger at the chastising note in his voice. “And I was supposed to know this?”

He frowned. “It is not the way of my people to leave the helpless to fend for themselves.”

Tempest was insulted all over again. She was
not
helpless. “Well, I don’t know your people so I could hardly be expected to know that about them, could I?” Settling in a bit of a huff, she turned her attention to her food, demolishing it in short order. She would say one thing for him. The man could cook. “Where are you going, anyway?”

“I am on Hymria, vision quest.”

Tempest thought that over for a while, but it finally occurred to her that she remembered something from her history lessons that sounded a lot like that, some sort of ritual the ancient tribes of Earth had once practiced when they hoped for a sign from their gods. She asked him if that was what it was. He looked at her in surprise and finally nodded.

“The star people practice this ritual, as well?”

Tempest gaped at him, but fortunately it occurred to her that it would be rude to point out that it was the uncivilized ancients of her world that had practiced such customs. Not that she could see any reason not to be impolite when he’d been rude to her—except that she wasn’t completely certain that he’d been intentionally insulting. She merely shrugged finally. “Once they did, but that was a long time ago. I don’t honestly know that much about it—except from history lessons.”

He nodded. “I must go alone to the sacred mountain. There I will purify myself —mind, body and spirit—and if I am worthy, the way will be shone to me.”

“Oh,” Tempest said, losing interest. “Well—maybe I could just go with you as far as the nearest village?” she suggested hopefully.

“What is village?”

“Where a lot of people live closely together … in shelters.”

“Like the place of the star people?”

“Yeah!” Tempest said, excited now. It seemed odd to be referred to as the star people, but she had no doubt that he was talking about their colony.

He shook his head. “There are none on Niah. The old ones tell that once there were such places, but that was long before living memory … before Niah became as it is now. Now we must travel always, looking for water and food, and we must leave before it is depleted and allow it time to replenish before we return again to that place.”

Tempest swallowed her disappointment with an effort. “I guess I’ll have to stay here then.”

He thought about it for several moments and finally shook his head. “This place is not safe. You must return to the other place. I will come for you there when I have done what I must do and take you to those who will be willing to care for you.”

Tempest gaped at him in dismay. “But… why?”

“Life is abundant here. Many tribes visit this place, some who do not value life as we do. You will be safer at the other place.”

“I think I should just stay here,” Tempest said stubbornly. “Maybe somebody will come along that won’t mind if I travel with them.”

“And maybe not.”

Tempest looked away, feeling a blush mount her cheeks again. “I can’t find my way back,” she confessed.

Kiran gaped at her for several moments as if she’d suddenly grown two heads. “You must follow your nose.”

Tempest glared at him. “You must have a better sense of smell than I do, because I sure as hell can’t sniff my way back to that place like a damned bloodhound!”

Kiran looked at her with a mixture of suspicion and surprise. “You truly can not?”

Tempest gave him a look. “No, I truly can not,” she said in a sarcastic tone of voice.

His lips tightened at her tone, but he said nothing else for some moments, apparently, from his expression, not terribly pleased about the options that left him with. “I will have to lead you back,” he said finally.

It wasn’t the solution Tempest had been hoping for and her disappointment made her angry. “That would be a real waste of time.”

“Yes, but I can not afford to do otherwise.”

“I won’t be in your way. I promise,” Tempest wheedled, deciding that it would probably not please him if she told him she’d just follow him again.

He shook his head, rising abruptly. “I must be pure of mind, body, and spirit or I will not be shown the way. You are a distraction I can not afford.”

Tempest gaped at him blankly. “I can be quiet.”

He rolled his eyes, shook his head, and stalked off toward the pool of water. Tempest stared after him, trying to figure out why he thought she would interfere with his purity. A thought occurred to her quite suddenly, but she dismissed it almost immediately. He couldn’t be talking about sex … could he? Impure? She did another mental scan for references in her studies and finally concluded that, as archaic as it might seem to her, his people still undoubtedly considered sex, or the lack of it, in the light of pure, or impure.

It struck her as funny, not just his view of sex, but the fact that he found her distracting. Why would a gorgeous creature like that find someone as ordinary as her attractive?

She frowned then. She hadn’t really had the opportunity to experiment with her sexuality or even to begin to discover if males found her attractive. There had been a boy in school that she had really liked, but her parents had said that she was too young to be socializing intimately and before she’d reached the age they found permissible, disease had spread through the colony and everyone had died. Before, though, when it had seemed they had their lives before them, most everyone her age had been obsessed with the possibility of sexual encounters, the boys most particularly. Her friend, Georgia, who’d been a year older than her and allowed to socialize used to giggle and tell her boys could think of little else.

She glanced at Kiran speculatively, but, try though she might, she simply could not picture him behaving at all the way the boys in the colony had behaved.

Maybe she’d been mistaken and that wasn’t what he’d meant at all?

There was one way to find out, of course, but she was uncomfortably certain that she hadn’t mastered the art of flirtation. Kiran was bound to think her ridiculous if she even tried any of the silly things she could remember the other girls doing.

She was still debating whether to join him beside the pool and try her hand at flirting when a scream tore through the night air that made her hair fairly stand on end.

Chapter Three

Tempest spun in a circle, wondering from which direction the threat would come, when something shot past her in a blur of motion. As her stunned gaze followed the movement, she looked up to see Kiran whirl to face the oncoming threat, his shock mirroring her own.

With another scream, the creature launched itself at him. Kiran let out a grunt of pained surprise as the animal’s momentum threw him off balance and he crashed to the ground. The creature moved like lightning, clawing and biting at him in a blur of motion that made it almost impossible to deflect the animal’s assault.

Abruptly shaking her stupor as she saw blood oozing from dozens of wounds on Kiran’s hands, arms, and chest, Tempest clapped her hands together to make a loud smacking noise. “Stop!” she yelled. To both her surprise and Kiran’s, the grat jerked at the sound of her voice and whirled to look at her, its red eyes glowing in the light of the moons. Scooping up a handful of rocks, Tempest began pelting the small cat-like creature. “Shoo!”

It let out a cry of pain as several of her missiles found their mark, leapt off of Kiran and slunk into the darkness as suddenly as it had appeared.

Gasping with a combination of effort and fear, Tempest stood stock still for several moments and finally rushed to Kiran as he pushed himself up to a sitting position.

“Are you hurt badly?”

He winced, but shook his head. “She did not reach my throat.”

Tempest knelt beside him, looking him over worriedly, but she saw that he had not tried to minimize his injuries. There were a dozen or more deep scratches and several nasty looking bites, but none appeared particularly life threatening. Ripping a scrap from her tattered shirt, she dipped it into the water, grasped one of his hands and began to wipe the blood away so that she could see the injuries better. Despite her concern for him, or perhaps because of it, her heart jumped and her stomach clenched as she looked down at his hand, felt the warmth of his palm seeping into hers. The sharp contrast in their skin tones fascinated her almost as much as the difference in sizes, making her feel, strangely enough, dominated—fragile next to him even though he’d given no outward appearance of doing so.

“You do not need to do this,” he said tightly.

She glanced up at his comment. There was pain in the taut lines of his face, but something else, as well, that made her feel suddenly self-conscious about the fact that she’d knelt virtually astride one of his hard, muscular thighs. She’d thought nothing about it when she’d done it, intent only upon getting close enough to him where he sprawled on the ground to examine his injuries. “Don’t be silly. You’re hurt. Do you have medicines with you?”

“Yes. In my pouch.” He sounded relieved.

Smiling at him reassuringly, Tempest left him to bathe the wounds while she went to retrieve his pouch. He joined her near the fire while she was still searching for it. Settling beside her, he took the pack from her and emptied it beside the fire. His medicinal pack was at the bottom of the pack. They both reached for it at the same time, but Kiran was faster. “I can apply the salve myself,” he said when she tried to take it from him.

Tempest sat back, torn between hurt and confusion. “You can’t see to put it on yourself. I’ll be careful not to hurt you.”

He ignored her comment, dipping his fingers into the vial of salve and swabbing it over the abrasions. Tempest watched him critically, still feeling more than a little hurt and angry that he’d rejected her offer to help. When he’d finished and reached to place the vial back in his pouch, she took it from him and moved closer. “You missed more than you hit,” she said chidingly as she carefully dabbed the spots he’d neglected.

To her surprise, he caught her upper arms in a grip painful enough that she winced. Immediately, he relaxed his hold, but he didn’t release her, merely stared into her eyes for one long moment before he set her firmly away from him.

“Thank you.”

Tempest’s surprise gave way to hurt and confusion once more. She stared down at the salve on her fingers for a couple of moments and finally replaced the top on the vial and dropped it into his pouch. “You’re welcome,” she said, standing abruptly and moving to the pool to wash the salve from her hands.