The Last Twilight by Marjorie M Liu

Author:Marjorie M Liu [Liu, Marjorie M]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-01-07T07:19:52+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Large fires tended to draw the eye at night: Amiri and Rikki did not wait to see who would find them. They did not talk. Just started walking, and after a time—given that she could not see in the darkness and kept falling on her face—Amiri picked her up in his arms and began to run.

Rikki could count on four fingers the number of men who had ever hauled her around like a sack of potatoes, and Amiri had the dubious distinction of being the fifth. There was an art to it. Smooth gait, strong arms, an almost uncanny ability to keep various body parts from slamming into anything hard. Her father had been quite good.

Amiri 'was better. He cradled her against his chest, folding her so close and tight she could have been curled in the fetal position on some hard vertical bed. His strength was immense. Being held by him felt safer than a cocoon made out of woven steel—like nothing could touch her. Nothing bad, ever.

And oh, the irony. Glowing eyes. Men who might be cheetahs, who vanished and who lit fires with their minds. Incredible, impossible; she was sensible, a scientist. Surely that meant something.

Or not. It was too weird. Hairless cat, weird. UFO, weird. The kind of weird that showed up in the National Enquirer, or those late night television documentaries her dad had loved, the ones about singing crystals and possessed nuns and the elusive tracks of some howling Tibetan Yeti. Oh, her dad would think this was great. He'd be all over Amiri like … like…

She couldn't finish the thought. It hurt too much.

The sky began to lighten. Rikki could not guess how long they had been traveling. Amiri found an old elephant trail—pounded earth, decades old, following a circuitous path deeper and farther into the rich heart of the wild and the green. It led them to a stream, and there, finally, he set her down. He did not look tired, but she thought he must be. His body seemed to soak in the early rays of morning sunlight, and he stretched and stretched. Nearly naked.

She looked away, face red. She could ignore his body at night—no light to see—but it was different now. And she liked looking at him far too much.

The edge of the water was crowded with vines and shining leaves, the soft muddy shore trampled with fine small hoof prints the size of her thumb. Rikki crouched, scooping water into her mouth. It made her think of Eddie. She could still see his face in her mind, bloody and slack-jawed; like Frankie, like Frankie, like Frankie in the car with the glass all over his body and her mother screaming, screaming, screaming.

"Will he live?" Her voice was low, hoarse. The first words she had spoken in hours.

Amiri took a moment. "If Rictor says he can make the boy well, then he can. And he will."

"You trust him."

"No. But I trust the woman who does."

Rikki tasted something rather unpleasant at the mention of another woman—a woman who Amiri trusted.

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