The Last Twilight (15 page)

“Helicopter,” he said, and in one smooth movement grabbed Eddie’s arms and hauled him over his shoulder. Rikki felt like she was having an out-of-body experience— floating, lost, her vision filled with stars—but she rose with him, grabbed the gun and the knife, and one of the packs.

She looked. Imagined movement on the edge of the jungle around the explosion, but no one shouted at her. No guns thundered.

“Rikki,” Amiri growled. She hesitated, then turned around, frantically searching for the case holding the samples of her blood. She found it and undid the latch, upending them all. She stepped hard on the glass tubes. They shattered beneath her feet. Blood soaked the grass.

She looked up and found Amiri watching her. His gaze was raw, wild. Dangerous. Just like her heart. She saw the cheetah in his eyes.

She ran toward him. The helicopter was loud. Just as they reached the jungle’s edge she glanced over her shoulder and saw the first shining edge of a black rotor. It filled her with fear, loathing; she felt again the
crack
of Broker’s skull radiating up her arms; and worse, his eyes, his cold voice drilling down to her bones.

Amiri grabbed her hand. Behind them, in the clearing by the river, the helicopter began to land. Amiri shifted Eddie to a higher place on his shoulder. They did not wait to see who jumped out.

They slipped into the twilight shadows, running until all they could hear were the birds and trees, pounding hearts and roaring blood, and Rikki found herself like a ghost, lost between worlds, her only anchor the man in front of her.

A man who was not human.

He took them away from the river, deep into areas where the air was full with the rich scents of decay, so closed and hot it was like being inside a giant mouth—a place where the scents of men did not carry—and when he found a small clearing where the trees loomed, ancient and twisting, roots as thick as bodies angling into the earth, he stopped, and set down Eddie, and caught Rikki as she fell on her knees, gasping for breath. There was water in the pack she carried. They drank. They slept. Rikki, curled in his arms. Amiri, cradling her with his body. No words. No questions. Too tired.

Warm and safe. He had found her. He had found Eddie. They were alive. That was all that mattered.

Amiri remembered being twenty years old. Never having known a woman naked. Suddenly wanting
that
woman naked more than anything. His body instantly hard, cruelly indifferent to the embarrassment of knowing that everyone could observe his arousal, tall and strutting within his flimsy pants.

Now, years later, he could still see her—that sly smile—as she looked down at his groin and whispered,
“Careful. Thought breaks the heart.”

Too much thought. Not enough. Amiri had learned heartbreak well and good from that woman. Angelique Amubodem, an immigrant from Cameroon. Her body— two years after she had taken him into her bed, becoming his part-time lover—had still not, and never would be, found.

Thought breaks the heart.
Words that whispered inside his head when he awakened in the night, drinking in the scent of another woman. Rikki.

She was no longer in his arms. She sat beside Eddie. Holding a water bottle to his mouth. Water dribbled past his lips. Something white and damp covered his forehead. A long sock.

Amiri sat up. Rikki smiled briefly, but it was tremulous. She rummaged behind her in the pack and pulled out black underpants, which she tossed to him. Amiri did not want to wear the clothes of the enemy. But he looked into her face and could not protest. He rose, and dressed. Rikki did not say a word.

The night was soft and warm. Quiet as a coo. No breeze. Only movement would cause the air to stir, here. Nothing else. They were safe.

He sat down beside her. Their shoulders rubbed. He expected her to pull away. It was a test—he was testing himself, testing her. He did not know why, but he could not help himself and it terrified him, it terrified—but he did and he waited and she gave him his answer. And it was shocking.

She swayed close. Leaned into him.

Amiri held his breath. He hardly dared move. Her slow heartbeat sounded like music, some drumbeat primeval, searching out his soul. He wanted to press even closer. Mingle songs.

“Eddie,” he said, hoarse. “How?”

“He got sick after you left. Went downhill, fast.”

“I thought we were not contagious.”

“Conjecture,” she said. “But in his case, I blame the canisters. Based on something I heard back there, it sounds as though this disease is contracted through inhalation into the lungs. It’s possible he breathed some of that powder we found. Unless he caught something at the refugee camp. Broker and his men certainly weren’t concerned.”

Amiri felt cold. “What did you say?”

Rikki hesitated. “Broker. The blond man that I… that you fought. That was what he called himself.”

“Impossible,” he murmured, but even as he said that word, he knew in his gut it was true. Broker. No one had ever found the man’s body.

And those photographs he had received in Kinsangani suddenly made more sense.

Rikki turned. “Do you know him?”

Cold name, colder heart.
“He is supposed to be dead, killed in Indonesia less than a year ago. He represents an organization with strong ties to organized crime.”

“No surprise,” she muttered. “But he also knew about the both of you. What you are.”

Amiri’s breath caught. Not because of Broker, but for the casual—even concerned—way she said those words. So easy, like it was nothing. He searched her gaze for fear, some cold awful horror, but Rikki looked at him, unblinking, and he saw little in her eyes but exhaustion and that same shadowed uncertainty that was a mirror of his own heart.

“And what do
you
know?” he asked, aware it was a stupid question, but unable to help himself.

“That you’re both different,” she said, just as carefully.

“Different,” he echoed.

“Different,” she said again, and raised an eyebrow. “Don’t make me spell it out.”

Amiri certainly would not. He tried to speak, caught himself, and cleared his throat. “You truly are not afraid?”

Rikki had to think about it for maybe ten seconds— which felt like ten hours, or ten days, or perhaps even ten lifetimes of trouble. “No, Amiri. I’m not. Unnerved, yes. Dismayed, totally. Ready to run screaming, you bet your ass. But not because of fear.”

“You are handling it well,” he said, feeling like a fool for such inanity.
Handling it well.
As though men shifted into animals most days of the week. Simple as American pie.

Rikki took a deep breath. “I’m a good actor.”

“No,” he said. “You are strong.”

“Strong,” she whispered. “I’m a scientist. Sensible. Rational. And I could be bullheaded and pretend that what I’ve seen is just…the product of stress. Delusion. Illusion. But I’m not that stupid. I’m not that blind.”

Amiri struggled. “What will you do?”

She looked him in the eye. “What do you want me to do?”

He could not answer her. What he needed to say was too complicated; what he wanted, a matter of life and death. His life, the lives of others. His world, fragile as the truth, as one bad mistake. He had made that mistake. He had paid. He still paid.

Rikki said, “I made a promise to that boy. I promised to keep him safe. Do you think I’m a woman of my word, Amiri?”

He said nothing. She stared, then looked away, exhaling sharply. The hurt in her eyes cut him like a knife.

“Rikki,” he said, but she held up her hand.

“No, I get it. I really do. You don’t know me for shit. You don’t trust me. Eddie said as much.”

Amiri glanced at the boy, wondering just what they had talked about. “How much do you understand?”

“About you and him? Not much. Only that he can start fires with his mind. And that you …” She stopped, frowning. “Just what is it that you do?”

“I change my shape.” His mouth felt numb. His words were hardly coherent. He could not believe he was admitting anything, but she had already seen too much. And he wanted to believe. He wanted to take that leap. Here, trust. Here, a friend.

Rikki stared, swallowing hard. “You…change.”

“I become a cheetah,” he added, trying to help her. Trying to help himself. “Only a cheetah.”

“Why one animal? If you can shift your shape—”

“I do not know,” he interrupted. “There are legends, myths, amongst my kind. That there was once a time when we were not constrained to one form, but free to choose as we wished. But other creatures became jealous, and so confined us, limited us. We became what we are. Shape-shifters, bound.”

“There are more of you.”

“There were many more, long ago. Now … our numbers dwindle.”

Rikki closed her eyes. “And Eddie? Are there more people like him?”

“I have never met anyone like Eddie,” Amiri replied, with a faint smile. “But there are others.”

She leaned forward, out of his arms. Stared at him, then Eddie, whose face was red, his hair slick with sweat. Blood dotted his nostrils. He smelled sick, a bitter ugly scent, salty and filthy, acrid as old ashes. He was sleeping like the dead. A coma.

Amiri preferred to think of it as enchantment, waiting for a miracle. As long as Eddie lived, it was possible. He did not want to think of the alternative. The boy was his responsibility. His charge, to keep safe.

You cannot run faster than a bullet,
Amiri heard his father whisper.
You cannot run faster than a friend, or a woman of ten thousand suns. Bring any of those into your life, and all you will find is suffering. Death.

His father, the optimist—but speaking truth, after all. There had been bullets and friends, suffering and dying, and as for the woman …

She reached across his lap to touch the young man’s hand. “It should be us.”

“And yet,” he replied, softly. Rikki’s breasts grazed his forearm. Her shoulder rubbed his chest. The urge to touch her was overwhelming, but he held himself back. Placed his hand flat against his thigh. Tried to control the response of his body, the quickening of blood in his loins. Found himself trembling with the effort.

Rikki looked at him. Her face was close, her eyes dark. “You’re shaking.”

“It is nothing,” he said.

“You’re sick,” she whispered.

“No,” he told her, but she twisted, rising up on her knees to press her fingertips against his cheek. Her scent rolled over him, warm as her body, and he could not help himself. He placed his hand over hers; trapping her, as gently as he could. Savoring the contact. Her skin.

Her breath caught. Amiri said nothing. He had no words, not even for himself.

You want her,
taunted his father.
You want to take her. You want to mark her, make her yours. Your woman.

His woman. Yes. He wanted that. He wanted Rikki Kinn beneath him, around him, squeezing him between her legs as he buried himself in her heat and scent. He wanted to mate—in the most primal way possible—and then make love, again and again, drowning her in pleasure. He wanted her to cry out his name. He wanted her to grow wet at the thought of him. He was not ashamed of that desire.

But what he felt went deeper than lust, and that…
that
was dangerous. His heart wanted her with a raw violence richer than blood, more profound than anything he had ever felt—and that was something he did not know how to reconcile. Or fight. He hardly knew her.

And as for trust… that was another matter entirely.

“You’re so warm,” Rikki said. She did not try to move her hand. Her body was very still. Heartbeats, rocking inside her chest. Amiri’s other hand crept up, sliding across her hip, around her waist. His palm fit perfectly into the lean curve of her spine, and he felt more than saw her thighs shift. Her scent changed, as well. He smelled spice, heat. Arousal.

“You think I have a fever?” he asked softly. “Am I so warm as that?”

“Burning,” she murmured, and the barest hint of a smile touched her mouth, cutting him to the core. “You need a doctor.”

I need you,
he almost said, and the words rang so hard inside his head he had to catch himself to make certain he did not echo them out loud. For a moment, he thought he had; her expression faltered, her gaze growing uncertain, almost…afraid.

Demon. Monster.
Angelique’s voice, whispering across the years.

Everything inside him stopped. His heart froze. He let go of her hand. Stopped touching her waist. His skin felt cold; all of him, dashed with ice.

“You should rest,” he said, looking down, away, at Eddie.

Rikki did not move. She did not speak. Her hand remained pressed against his face. His cheek burned beneath her palm; the only part of him still warm. He could not meet her gaze, and he waited, unable to speak.

She shifted, leaning close. Something warm touched his forehead. It took him a moment to realize it was her mouth. A kiss.

He looked up, stunned, but she was already sliding away, and he could not catch her gaze. She kept her head down as she stepped across Eddie, and he watched as she lay on the ground with the young man between them, curled on her side. She placed her hand on top of Eddie’s chest, fingers splayed against it.

Dead woman,
he thought.
She would be dead if my father were here.

Like Angelique, or the handful of others who had crossed paths with the old cheetah. The price of being sloppy with secrets. Trusting those undeserving of the truth. Amiri had never had the stomach to solve his problems that way.

But he looked at Rikki, her small hand pressed so carefully on Eddie’s chest, and her small kindness, that gentle comfort, were worth more than any promise.

He forced himself to lie down, and pressed his cheek against the leaves, listening to his blood, the blood of the earth, some low soft music of the night. He stared at Eddie’s shoulder, willing his friend to wake. Praying silently for strength. Enough to see them through. Enough to keep himself safe from his heart.

“Amiri.” Rikki peered at him over Eddie’s chest. “You don’t trust me.”

“And you trust no one at all.” He swallowed hard, closing his eyes. “Why is that, Rikki Kinn?”

She did not answer him for a long time, and when she did, her words were unexpected, chilling. “Broker took my blood.”

He opened his eyes. She told him more. About Jaaved, the deception, his knowledge of the canisters and the disease. The help she had received from the mercenaries in Broker’s employ.

“A double cross,” Amiri mused. “What game was Broker playing?”

She said nothing. He watched her closed expression, the way her fingers played with Eddie’s shoulder. He said, “It is time for the truth, Rikki Kinn.”

“The truth,” she echoed.

“Tell me why these men hunt you. Tell me your value to them.”

She hesitated. “If it’s what I believe it is, then I’m in deeper trouble than I realized.”

“Tell me,” he said again, searching her eyes.

“I found something,” she replied, looking away. “My entire team, not just me. Two years ago we were doing research in this region. There had been an outbreak amongst some chimpanzees, and so we went looking specifically for fruit bats in that vicinity. Trying to confirm findings that those animals were the natural reservoir for Ebola. Reports had already gone out to the media, but some of us thought it was premature.” She closed her eyes, fingers going still. “So we’re out there, and we’re deep in the bush, and we find some bats. We run tests. Every single one of them comes up positive for the virus. Every one. Antibodies, viral genomes in certain organs. Isolation of the virus on sensitive cell lines.” She took a deep breath. “That last bit was the mother lode. You can isolate the virus in living human subjects who are infected with the disease, but those samples are controlled like Fort Knox. Random, too. No way to predict when you’ll get one, because outbreaks don’t just happen every day. But those bats were a stable source.
Anyone
could get to them.”