Twilight Fall

"No, that's way west of here." She hopped off the stool and stepped in front of him. Before he could grab her hands, she hooked her fingers in the bell loops of his trousers. "Come on and dance with me."

"I do not dance."

"Do you do anything besides drive a boat, frown, slaughter English, and stare at my boobs?" she inquired sweetly.

"Yes. But I do not dance."

"Oh, God." She seized the beer bottle the bartender handed her and carried it with her to stand by the place where the patrons were dancing.

"Don't you Jap fellas beat your women?" the fat man asked as he thumped a basket of fried bird parts, celery stalks, and two cups of some white lumpy sauce in front of Kyan.

"We not have to," Kyan told him in English he was careful not to mangle. "She American. Multiracial."

"No shit, Sherlock." The bartender scowled and stalked off.

Kyan did not touch the food, which looked as repulsive as it smelled, but drank from the bottle of water. It had been purified, so it contained no trace of anything but the machines at the bottling factory.

Melanie went out amid the dancing couples and began shaking her body by herself. Several men came to join her. Kyan watched for the next hour as the American girl danced, drank many bottles of beer that the men bought for her, laughed, and generally acted like an intoxicated child.

When she climbed onto one of the tables to dance for six grinning men crowding around it, Kyan decided she had had enough of a good time, and left his stool.

Melanie undulated as much to the calls of the excited men as to the music, and began unbuttoning her flimsy shirt, revealing the tops of her breasts. Kyan reached up before she could expose herself, clamped his hands around her waist, and lifted her down to the floor.

"We are leaving," he told her. "Now."

"I didn't get to eat my wings yet," she whined, tottering toward the bar.

He turned her around to face the exit. "I will make you food after you are finished puking."

"I'm not going to puke." She leered at him. "I know. You just want to have sex with me while I'm drunk."

It was easier to agree with her. "Yes. That is why we must go to the boat. To have sex again."

"Hold on, there, Bruce." One of the men from the bar approached them. "This little lady hasn't finished her dance."

Kyan watched as the men who had supplied Melanie with beer and the other men from the bar gathered in a loose circle around them. "She finished."

"I say she's not," a hulking boy said in a low, nervous voice. "What chew gonna do about it?" He giggled like a girl.

"Aw, he's just her boss," another man said. "Not her boyfriend. She said so."

"I don't care what the little slant-eyed bastard is," a fourth man growled. "He ain't drinking, and he ain't white, so he got no business coming in here in the first place."

"You rednecks are such pussies," Melanie said suddenly, weaving as she jabbed a finger toward the last man who had spoken. "Kyan could wipe up the floor with you. With all of you. One hand tied behind his back."

Kyan felt the mood of the men around them change from unpleasant to ugly. "Melanie, be quiet."

"I'd like to see him do that," the fat man called from behind the bar.

Kyan looked down at the floor, which was wet and sticky with spilled beer. He slipped his foot out of his deck shoe and stepped in one of the larger puddles. A crackle of blue light flashed across the floor, leaping from puddle to puddle until it disappeared under the stools.

Beer taps began popping off and soaring into the air as fountains of beer erupted. Women screamed and men shouted. The foaming ale sprayed wildly, coming down like a rain shower on the heads of the patrons. Some ran up, laughing as they tried to catch some of the beer with their mouths. The men around Kyan and Melanie scattered.

Kyan bent down and put his shoulder to Melanie's belly and lifted her up onto his shoulder. She shrieked and pounded his back with her small fists as he strode out of the bar with her.

"What are you doing? Put me down."

Kyan carried her back to the pier and set her down on her feet by the boat. He released the mooring ropes.

"You're not going to have sex with me again," she said, following him to the bowline. "Are you?"

"Not now."

"Well, I don't want to hang out with you anymore. You're mean." She whirled around and stumbled down the pier.

Kyan caught her arm from behind. "Melanie, get on the boat."

"Fuck you." She repeated it in Chinese.

"Later." He reached into his jacket and took out his weapon. "Get on the boat now."

Valentin left Liling sleeping restlessly and pulled on his damp clothes. He needed to inspect the rest of the cabin and find water. The cabin's owner had not left any fresh food in the refrigerator, as with the generator off it would have spoiled, but had stocked cans and boxes of nonperishable items in a large kitchen pantry.

The generator, Valentin discovered, provided ample power to the house and to a well with an electric pump. He ran the taps in the kitchen and tasted the water, which was cold and clear.

Unfortunately, he confirmed that there were no telephones, radios, or anything else he could use to send a message to the outside world.

Valentin abandoned the idea of summoning help and turned his attention to what he could do for Liling with what he had. He knew she needed fluids; humans who lost too much blood quickly became dehydrated. He vaguely remembered Sacher giving his grandson sugary tea when the boy had broken his arm falling off his bicycle. After searching the pantry, he found a container of orange-flavored sports-drink mix and made a glass of that for her.

In the front room he knelt by the couch, held her upright, and coaxed her into swallowing some of the drink. She coughed, and then began to choke. He rolled her on her side as she immediately regurgitated what she had drunk from the glass. He tried two other drink mixes with the same results. Finally he gave her plain water, and that she kept down.

"I know you like tea," he told her as he gently wiped her face clean. "If I find some. I will make you as much as you can drink." He smoothed the damp hair away from her face. "Not too hot this time. With a little practice. I will find the perfect temperature."

The sound of his voice seemed to help as much as the water, and she fell into a deeper sleep.

Valentin reluctantly left her to check on the generator and bring into the cabin some of the wood that had already been split and stacked in the shed. Using the fireplace would conserve the electricity, which would run out as soon as the petrol for the generator did. When he stacked the short logs beside the hearth, he noticed that what he assumed was a wood rack was in fact a curious metal device with dials and a button.

Valentin pushed the button and smelled propane gas just before a light flickered and the gas ignited. The dials, he discovered, controlled the amount of gas supplied to the device.

A fireplace that burned gas in the middle of a forest of perfectly good trees. He shook his head in wonder.

He thoroughly searched the rest of the cabin, finding a locker-style trunk filled with old clothes and shoes, and boxes of rifle ammunition but no rifles. A fish made of resin hanging on one wall began to twitch and sing to him as he passed it. He took it down, found the battery switch on the back, and shut it off.

After looking in on Liling, Valentin felt sticky and looked down. The sugared drinks she had coughed up had saturated his clothes and were drying on his hands. He took some of the clean clothing from the locker and went into the cabin's small bathroom to wash up.

As he stripped and stepped into the small shower stall, he realized that he was using both arms without hesitation, accepting the unthinkable without question. His damaged arm felt so improved it seemed no different than it had before the duel.

I'm sorry, Val. Alexandra Keller had told him after he had healed from the surgery, and they had discovered that his reattached arm wouldn't work. I've done what I can, but even Kyn can't heal from everything.

He had heard that some of the patients at the Lighthouse had claimed that Liling's touch healed them. He could attribute his own miracle only to her touch. But if she could heal with her hands, why was she working as a gardener? Why hide what she could do?

She hides it for the same reason we Kyn hide our existence, he thought. Humanity fears what it does not understand.

If the public knew about a woman who could heal with a touch. Liling would be hounded unmercifully. The world was filled with the sick and dying, and everyone would expect her to use her ability to heal them. The wealthy and powerful would want to control her gift for their own benefit. The zealots would condemn her. Governments might even go to war over possession of her.

At best she would end up imprisoned: at worst she would be murdered.

Liling had wanted to deny that she had done anything. In that moment when Valentin had taken her into his arms, he had felt her panic. He could compel her to tell him the truth about her gift, and exactly how she had healed his arm. She could not resist his talent. But she must have a reason for not volunteering the information, something that had made her a target of the Brethren. All he would do by forcing the truth out of her was satisfy his own curiosity. He could allow her to keep her secrets until she trusted him enough to share them.

He would give her that time, but he already knew he could not let her go.

When they escaped this place. Valentin decided, he would take her back to Chicago with him. The pilot had been a Brethren operative, and willing to crash the plane in order to kill her. Jaus could not fathom why the Brethren would want to murder a woman who could heal with her hands, unless they assumed she had the talent because she was Kyn. They would pursue her without cessation if that were the case. It might also explain why she had changed jobs and locations so often: surely she had known she was being hunted.

Liling could not run from the order forever; they had found her this time and they would find her again. She needed the protection of the Kyn.