The captain shouted a command. Rifles leveled, pointing at me.
“Stand down, gal!” cried Captain Tira.
A gust of wind roared through the cave with a squall of blown sand. The lamps whooshed out. A rifle went off. The sting of its powder lanced up my nostrils. A hand fastened on my shoulder. I twisted away, grabbed the arm, and bit. The man shrieked, reeling away. Men shouted as the lamps crashed to the ground and shattered with a gush of oil that abruptly flamed into bright fire.
The scent of guava flooded the air. A person who looked like me raced past them out the cave mouth. To my left stood a third opia looking just like me. Everyone started shouting at once. In the confusion I dashed for the back of the cave. Another gust of wind doused the burning oil, drenching the cave in darkness. I thudded into a man’s body which I knew instantly as Vai’s.
“Yee brother and cousin is safe. Follow me.”
We splashed through the string of caves up which we had so recently climbed. I stumbled more than once, stubbing my toes on rocks. Blood dribbled down my foot to smear the ground.
When we passed from the mortal world into the spirit world I did not know. But in the dense night of the cave, a big cat’s body nudged up beside me. A long incisor grazed my hip as my hand slipped across his moist nose. He licked me with a raspy tongue. I giggled.
“My feet are coated with slime!” exclaimed Bee in the darkness. “It’s disgusting.”
I laughed.
“Shh!” The opia pulled me close, lips pressed to my ear. “We’s not out of danger.”
Even knowing I was grasping a stranger—a dead man!—I could not stifle the tremor of arousal I felt at the familiar shape I had my arms around, his strong shoulders, his solid chest. He even had the sawdust-and-sweat scent of Vai as well as the mouthwatering fragrance of guava.
“Then it’s best if we hurry,” I whispered, my irritation at my body’s unwanted reaction making my voice a hiss.
“We can bide a few breaths here, gal, as long as we bide quiet-like. The maku soldiers cannot venture any deeper into the cave. ’Tis a small reward to ask that yee kiss me, don’ yee reckon?” he murmured in Vai’s coaxing voice. His lips brushed my mouth.
I stiffened my entire body, as Vai had done when my sire had teased him with my form in the coach. “I don’t reckon. Not with my brother and cousin right next to me! And the cacica’s head in the basket.”