Blaze (12 page)

Kira found a bronze bench hidden in the
hedges and sat down. She pulled her phone from her pocket and did
the only thing she could think of doing in that moment.

“Luke?” She sent the text message to his
phone. She couldn’t call him—not with Tristan so close that he
could hear every word they said. It didn’t matter anyway. There was
no reply. “I’m sorry.” She sent the message before remembering he
had smashed his phone yesterday and probably didn’t have a new one
yet. “I miss you.” She sent that last one more for herself.

“Kira?”

She turned at the sound of Tristan’s voice
and made room for him to sit next to her.

“Kira, what’s wrong?” He asked and when she
opened her mouth to dismiss the notion, he beat her to the punch
with an, “and don’t say nothing.” Kira sighed. Maybe this total and
complete lie wasn’t worth it. Maybe she could let a few of her
doubts show. Surely Aldrich was expecting some resistance.

“I just don’t understand,” Kira started but
then changed her tactics, “I mean, yesterday you were Mr. I Hate
Aldrich, Aldrich Is Not To Be Trusted. And now you’re the president
of his fan club. At breakfast you were like two frat brothers
talking about the good old days. It doesn’t make sense, Tristan.”
Kira curled her knees into her chest and hugged her body close.

“He’s changed, Kira. I don’t know how, but
he has.”

“How can you be so sure?” Kira asked.
Tristan’s hands were in his lap and he rested on his forearms. His
eyes stared straight ahead, past the garden to the rolling green
hills in the distance.

“Yesterday, when you were talking with your
mom, Aldrich and I went to his study to talk. You want to know the
first thing he said to me? I’m sorry!” Tristan shook his head in
disbelief. “He actually apologized for all of the vile things he
made me do when he turned me. He said they were wrong. He said he
doesn’t do it anymore.”

Kira opened her mouth to speak, but Tristan
kept talking. “I didn’t believe him either, not at first, but I
searched the house. I reached out with my senses, listening for the
moan of a girl in pain or the sound of a cell locking shut. I
couldn’t hear anything, anywhere.”

“What about the girls we saw last night?”
Kira asked, thinking of their empty stares and scarred necks.

“Contractual. They give him blood for a
period of five years and then he turns them.”

“Still,” Kira said, looking at him with wide
eyes, “you saw their faces.”

“I agree it’s not ideal,” Tristan said, “but
it’s not like it was before. And who knows? With time, maybe he’ll
stop using live donors completely. Maybe we can help him.”

“Tristan, do you even hear yourself right
now? This man made you torture people, he made you hate yourself
for decades.” Kira stood and started to pace. “All he ever did was
use you for his own pleasure. He never cared about you or what you
wanted. He’s a killer!” Kira shouted the last part and ran her
hands through her hair, practically ripping it out. She needed to
calm down. This wasn’t going anywhere and Aldrich could definitely
hear everything she was saying.

“I’ve killed people,” Tristan said
softly.

“Not the same way, Tristan. Not without
remorse.”

“People can change,” he whispered. Kira
looked into his wounded eyes and wondered for a moment if he was
speaking about Aldrich or himself.

“They can only change if they were something
they never wanted to be in the first place,” Kira told him and sat
back down, taking his hand.

“But what about your mom?” Tristan asked.
“If she found a way to love him, can’t you believe there must be
something redeemable in him?”

“Maybe,” Kira said, mostly because she
didn’t feel like fighting anymore. Tristan squeezed her hand.

“He wants to help us, Kira. That’s what he
told me last night. The only reason he invited us here was to atone
for his sins by helping us be together, forever. He can give us a
future.”

Kira turned to look at him, ready to chide
him for being so easily fooled, but the look in his eyes stopped
her. It was yearning—pure, unadulterated yearning. He wanted so
badly to believe in the dream Aldrich presented—the idea that even
the most evil person can change, that in Aldrich all of their
prayers were answered and they could stay together. And because he
wanted so badly for that impossible future to be true, he couldn’t
see any of the flaws in his logic. He couldn’t see past the
dream.

So Kira decided to keep lying, to let him
dream for a little while longer, before breaking that hope into a
million pieces.

“I know, Tristan,” she said and wrapped his
arms around her, so she leaned against his chest. “I want it too.”
She dropped her head on his shoulder. “I just need a little more
proof.”

He tightened his arms around her, hugging
her closer to his chest, and they sat like that for a while. Not
talking, just enjoying one another’s presence. Kira was grateful
for the silence because she honestly didn’t know what to say.

Which of them was right? Was she just being
stubborn because she didn’t want her mother to be a vampire? Or
maybe it was something else.

Part of the reason Kira loved Tristan was
because he made her feel so normal, so human. Whenever they were
together, they spoke of everything but the supernatural. He let her
live in a fantasy world where conduits and vampires didn’t exist,
and they were just two people.

But if Aldrich was telling the truth, and
her mother had turned into a vampire, then everything was
different. Suddenly the dreams Tristan spoke of weren’t just a
fantasy: they were real. They were achievable.

And that scared Kira, because the instant a
future with Tristan became a reality, she realized she didn’t want
it. Being a conduit was not only what she was, but who she was. But
did that mean everything she’d ever had with Tristan was a lie, a
fantasy she let herself believe because she wasn’t ready to face
her destiny as a conduit?

But out here in the garden, his arms felt so
right as they hugged her close. It couldn’t all be imagined—it just
couldn’t.

“You two look precious.” Kira recognized the
overly-sugared sweetness of her fake mother’s voice. “Tristan,
would you come with me? I want to talk to you about something.”

He nodded and Kira eased out of his arms,
feeling cold in their absence. The bench seemed too big for one, so
Kira stood to wander around the garden. A walk was just the thing
she needed to clear her head, so she chose a path and continued
following it until she reached a statue.

It was a discus thrower carved in marble and
stuck forever in a grimace. His arm reached back, pulled painfully
taut in the moment right before he could finally release the throw.
Kira looked at his face. Somehow, even though his eyes were made of
stone, Kira could tell they held determination and also a slight
fear. Fear of losing? Fear of not being the best?

Kira kept walking, stepping around the
statue and taking the next left to another flower patch. This
statue was of a dancing woman with her clothes half falling off.
Typical, she thought to herself, the boy is playing sports and the
girl is frilling around without even noticing that her dress is
basically on the floor. Kira distantly wondered if this was the
Roman equivalent to thinking that all girls did during sleepovers
was have lingerie pillow fights.

The next statue was different. A man was
twisting to look over his shoulder. His hand stretched close to the
ground, grasping for empty space. His eyes stared down into the
hedges by his feet. In them, Kira saw the look of a man who could
see his future disappearing right before his eyes. His features
were mid-fall, a strange mix between utter joy and utter despair.
His eyebrows were raised, yet poised to turn down. His mouth was
open and smiling, but the corners were slanted as if he had just
cried out.

Even his body was fighting against itself.
His stance was that of someone ready to pull something close, ready
to help a girl stand to her feet. But his outstretched arm pushed
the other way, reaching into a void, grasping for something that
had disappeared.

Without realizing it, Kira reached her own
hand out. Her fingers inched forward for his open palm, somehow
hoping to sooth this miserable creature trapped in rock.

“I wouldn’t do that,” a voice stopped her an
inch from the sculpture. Kira dropped her hand and spun around to
face Aldrich.

“Why not?” She asked and tried to calm her
rapid pulse. He had scared her, but that was the last thing Kira
wanted him to know.

“It’s bad luck,” he replied, stepping closer
to the statue and to Kira. He reached out his hand, stopping in the
same place Kira’s had been the moment before.

“Why?” She asked, watching him
carefully.

“You don’t know the story?” Aldrich asked.
He turned to face her and let his hand drop to his side again. Kira
shook her head.

“Orpheus,” Aldrich began, “was the son of a
muse. His voice was bewitching and powerful, and no one could deny
the beauty of it. When he played his lyre, no one could resist the
gentle lull of his music and no one could resist him. Especially
not Eurydice, a local maiden, a beautiful woman, but also an
ordinary woman.” Kira heard the slight disgust in his voice at the
word ordinary, as if the idea itself insulted him.

“On their wedding day,” he continued,
“Eurydice was so happy that she and her bridesmaids celebrated by
dancing to his songs in the meadows beside the ceremony. But
happiness is not what this story is about,” Aldrich said. He leaned
down and let his hand disappear in the flower around the base.
“Hiding in the grasses was a viper, and with one bite,” Aldrich
pulled a flower from the ground, ripping it from its roots, “with
one bite she was dead.” Aldrich offered Kira the flower, but she
didn’t want to touch it. So instead, he closed his palm, crushing
the petals. A second later, the crumbled remains were lost to the
wind.

“Orpheus was overcome with grief and he
vowed he would not lose his love. So using his music as his weapon,
he went into the underworld and convinced the Lord of the Dead to
give him back his bride. His music was so sweet, so irresistible,
that even death could not deny him. So Eurydice was returned to
him, but on one condition. He could not look at her or touch her
until they both reached the surface. Orpheus was patient and he
walked through the darkness until it started to turn grey, until
eventually the sun shined down on him and birds chirped in his ear.
He had reached the top. He was free. He turned to reach for his
bride, to make sure she was still there. He needed to see her, to
pull her close to him, but she was still shrouded in the mists of
the underworld. In that instant, he realized his mistake, but it
was too late. Orpheus grabbed for Eurydice, but she was already
gone, a ghost disappearing into the ground.”

Kira looked at the sculpture, understanding
it now. This man was the definition of lost hope and the artist had
perfectly captured the moment someone’s life completely turned on
itself.

“It’s so sad,” Kira mumbled, shaking her
head.

“Is that what you really think?” Aldrich
asked. Kira met his eyes and watched him studying her.

“It’s tragic,” Kira said and stopped herself
from continuing. Aldrich narrowed his eyes.

“And…” He let the thought linger, suspecting
Kira had more to say.

“It’s just, he was an idiot. A complete
moron,” Kira sighed, getting frustrated. Aldrich’s eyes lit up,
like this was the reaction he had expected. “Who is so stupid? You
have your entire future hanging on one idea—do not turn around—and
you can’t stop yourself? It’s just, it makes me angry. He not only
ditched his happily ever after, he let Eurydice down. He basically
killed her.” Kira stopped. She was getting way too impassioned by
the story.

Aldrich laughed and smiled at Kira, as if
she had passed one of his tests. “Ah, Kira, you are such a
delight.”

“Why?” Kira eyed him wearily, not sure she
really wanted an answer.

“Because you are the first person I’ve told
that story to who has had the same reaction as me,” he said and
placed a hand on her shoulder. Kira tried to hide her revulsion, at
his touch and his words.

“I doubt that.” She shrugged free of his
hold.

“It’s true. We are far more similar than
you’d like to think.”

Kira retreated from the statue and started
down another pathway. Aldrich followed closely behind.

“We’re both logical, we don’t let our
emotions control us.”

“That’s not true,” Kira retorted. She
couldn’t even count how many times she felt overwhelmed by her
feelings, how many times they seemed to stifle her.

“Isn’t it? In the past few months, your
entire world has turned upside down. Yet here you are, fighting. A
lesser person would have given up, would have let the heartbreak
overwhelm them.”

“That’s not because I’m ‘logical,’ it’s
because I’m too stubborn to lose,” Kira said, glaring at Aldrich
over her shoulder.

“To lose what?”

“Anything I care about,” Kira replied.

“But I see you, Kira,” Aldrich said and
reached for her hand. He stopped her and forced her to turn around
and look at him. “I see the wheels in your head spinning. I see the
doubt circling. Dreamers would have already surrendered, would have
been satisfied with the idea that all of their hopes could actually
come true. But not you. You’re realistic and you need proof. You
need the logic.”

“Tristan—” Kira started.

“Tristan is a dreamer. He’s always been
ruled by his emotions. It’s why he is easy to predict, but you’re
different.”

“What’s your point, Aldrich?” Kira asked.
She was tired of talking in riddles.

“My point is that you don’t believe me yet.
You don’t believe that I’ve changed. You don’t believe my motives
are pure, that all I want to do is reunite two star-crossed lovers
and make up for the sins of my past. My point is that you are
Orpheus. The story is not about a man turning around out of joy,
the story is about a man turning around because he couldn’t believe
that all of his dreams were about to come true. He needed proof
that Eurydice was following him, he needed her touch to confirm she
was real. And Kira,” Aldrich looked down at her, his almost black
eyes even seemed to warm for a second, “sometimes the dreamers have
it right. Sometimes, you can’t have proof. Sometimes, you just need
to believe.”