Ignite (Midnight Fire Series Book One) (14 page)

Kira’s mother walked outside in a sweatshirt
with a box of tissues in hand. "Kira, I don’t even know where to
begin. I haven’t spoken of the conduits in years. Your father
doesn’t even know about my past. I never wanted any of us to be a
part of that world."

"Start with my father, your brother. What was
he like? You are Punishers, right?" Kira tried to keep the crack
from her voice. She thought it the logical place to start, the
beginning of her father’s tale before he even met her real mother.
She wished she had a picture, some sort of token to remember them
both by.

"Your father was amazing. He was the
protective older brother, the ideal fighter, the perfect son, the
dream boy, but most of all he was someone you knew without a doubt
you could count on for anything in your life. He wanted to protect
the entire world, to fight epic battles, and he started by helping
me." Kira noticed that her mother’s gaze had glazed over. She was
staring somewhere beyond their backyard, back into her memories.
"When we were younger, he made sure none of the kids bullied me for
being small and weak with my power. You see Kira, I ran away from
that world because I had no place in it. As a child, I could never
truly channel the sun properly, and when my power matured at the
age of sixteen, I still couldn't hurt a fly. To a Punisher that is
the ultimate insult, and many of our people turned against me, but
never your father. I lived at home, just waiting until I could
leave and go to college and be normal. And, he accepted me."

Kira grabbed a tissue then. It seemed her
mother and her had both been misfits in unfamiliar worlds, and she
painted the most beautiful picture of her true father as someone
fearless. Something Kira wished she had inherited some of.

"When he was eighteen, he went on his first
hunt and made his first kill. He returned boasting of how much fun
he’d had and how exhilarating the fight was. He said he was the
only newbie who hadn’t needed help from the elders to stop his
vampire. I could tell, just by looking at him, that he had found
his place and that he would grow to be one of our best fighters.
Conduit societies are stuck in the past in many ways. The men went
out to hunt for vampires to help protect humanity, and the women
remained at home protecting the children in case our location was
ever found out. And, the entire town knew your father would be the
best of us. Every time he came back from a trip, he shined with
pride and others told the tales of his heroics. Because for us, the
stronger the fighter, the more divine, and your father was seen as
a heavenly angel to many of our people."

"But that all changed?" Kira guessed, knowing
this story had everything but a happy ending.

"Yes, that all changed. Most youths mature at
sixteen and start going on guided missions, but at age twenty we
are allowed to hunt alone. At first, your father acted much the
same and came back with joy in his eyes. However, one day, a few
weeks before he turned twenty-one, he returned solemnly. Everyone
thought he failed to catch his target for the first time; nothing
unusual for a young hunter. They all let him be. But, I knew your
father, and I knew something else was wrong."

"Did you talk to him about it?" Kira asked.
Their society was so different from her own. She couldn’t imagine
the pressure of feeling like a warrior and never being able to make
mistakes. Kira looked at her mothers red curls as they blew in the
breeze, and wondered if she viewed it as a curse.

"I tried. I’ll never forget what he told me.
I had been in the kitchen washing the dinner plates when I noticed
him sitting outside on the back steps, so I paused and went out to
comfort him. I told him that everyone makes mistakes and everyone
misses every so often, but I could tell they were just empty words.
He was looking up at the stars with the deepest confusion in his
eyes, and then he turned to me and asked, ‘Ellie? Have you ever
wondered if we were wrong?’ and for a moment I didn’t understand.
But, when he turned to look back to the night sky, I realized he
meant us, the Punishers. Were we wrong in killing? Did vampires
really have souls? ‘Of course not,’ I told him full of confidence.
We were never even allowed to question those beliefs, rooted in our
ancestral history for thousands of years. I saw him shut himself
away when I answered. He stood up and went inside to finish the
dishes, and I was the one left to ponder why he would ever ask me
that."

"What would you reply now?" Kira asked her
mother, realizing they almost mirrored the scene from her memories,
sitting on the porch, but staring at the sun rather than the
stars.

"I’ve never seen a vampire who didn't appear
evil to the core, but I suppose there are always exceptions to the
rules." Her mother paused and Kira thought that maybe she was
wishing she used that response with her brother, to provide some
sort of solace. For a moment, Kira allowed herself to think of
Tristan, could he be that exception? But she shook her head and
tried to focus on her real father and his story.

"It was my birth mother, wasn’t it? A
Protector changing his mind?" Her mother nodded.

"I didn’t realize it for a long time, but in
the year that followed, he went on more solo missions and came back
with rebellious ideas of capturing vampires and running tests on
them rather than killing them. He wanted to research the old texts
to see if anyone had ever found a vampire with his soul intact. He
never found anything, but the elders were still so angry with him.
He was their golden boy and within a year he became dirt. I noticed
he received secret letters and made whispered phone calls when he
thought our family was asleep. I confronted him but he never
answered straightly. I never dreamed he was secretly dating a
Protector. Of all the rules in our society, that is the most
unbreakable and the most forbidden. For two years this continued,
but soon after his twenty-third birthday, he received news that
scared him enough to finally come clean to me. I was twenty-one at
the time and had been living away from home for a while. I had
already met your adoptive father and we were so in love. Of course,
I traveled home to visit, but the conduit life already seemed so
far off to me.

"But, one day, I opened the door of my
apartment to your father’s very conflicted face. I read joy, but
also the deepest sorrow, and I knew something was incredibly wrong.
‘Ellie,’ I remember him choking out to me before breaking down into
sobs. I brought him inside and there he confessed to me that he had
fallen in love with the most beautiful woman in the world, one who
had the purest blonde hair imaginable. At first, I was horrified. I
wasn’t sure whether to comfort or to scold him but I knew I was all
he had. He told me how they first met while she had been living in
New York trying to protect its citizens from the ever-increasing
local vampire population. That had been the site of his first solo
mission, and they had been tracking the same clan when they ran
into each other. At first, they hated each other but then they
realized they needed to help each other in order to hunt down and
weaken the clan. They started debating philosophies until each was
unsure of the lessons they’d been taught since birth. And, when
they hunted down the clan, your father killed and your mother
weakened, but neither felt the same joy as before. He said from
that first meeting, they never stopped talking. At first, it had
been secret run-ins in New York, then letters, then phone calls,
until finally they had stopped taking on real missions and just
escaped to meet each other in private. He said they had secretly
gotten married a month ago and he pulled a ring from a chain around
his neck. And finally, he showed me a letter your mother had just
written, confessing she was pregnant with a child."

"And it was the worst news imaginable?" Kira
guessed and sipped at her hot cocoa for solace. She sank further
into her seat and grabbed a preemptive tissue to wipe at the tears
that would soon be falling.

"No, your father was the happiest I had ever
seen him, but it was difficult. They knew there would be no turning
back. A child meant a life on the run, because you had to be kept
secret. He confessed to me that they had made a plan to meet up
where they had first met and run away, and keep running if that was
what would be needed to keep you safe. He was going to completely
turn his back on his people, all for you, the unborn child he
already cherished above everything else."

"But the plan backfired?" Kira asked and her
mother nodded. "This seems to be a story where everything that
could have gone wrong, did go wrong."

"In many ways, it was. Your father and mother
did run away together, and you were born eight months after your
father had come to see me. I was the only one he told, and I begged
him to come see me, to let me see you. He told me they had found a
safe place and he couldn’t give it away, but that they would chance
it and come to me. I was overjoyed. For one secret weekend, your
father came to visit me and I met your mother and you. You were the
cutest baby ever, only two months old and already with a full set
of curly blonde and red hair. You always had a smile on your face,
and to the outside viewer all three of you would have looked like
the perfect family. In the short hours I spent with your mother, I
learned she was caring and gentle. She was an amazing woman, and I
easily understood how the two of them had come to love each other.
When they left, I assumed it would be years before I could meet you
again, but in reality it was only a few short days."

"What happened?" Kira asked, knowing the
heartbreaking story of her true parents was about to come to an
end. Her mom was just about twenty-three in the story and Kira knew
that was the age she had always been told she was born.

"On their way back home, they were discovered
by Punishers from a different state. They were captured and
questioned, and you were almost put to death until your mother’s
people came to argue for your life. In the middle of the night,
your father tried to escape. He found your mother and you, but
while running away, you three were jumped by vampires. Your father
was killed, as was your mother, but the vampires had all shared a
little of the blood so none was completely immune to our powers. We
got there just in time to save you and hold them at bay by mere
feet. We rescued you and saved your father’s body, but your
mother’s was still on the other side of the barrier our powers had
created. When we went back the next day, it was gone."

"And I was given to you, my closest relative,
so I could live outside of that world and maybe have a chance at a
normal life. The Protectors agreed to guard me, and you and father
adopted me to save me."

"And also to love you, as I always have. I
used to pray at night that you hadn’t been gifted with any powers,
but as you grew I knew that wasn’t true. You had eyes of fire and
hair to match and my prayers turned to hoping you would never find
out what you were."

"But, I did."

"You did." Her mother agreed sadly. She had
barely looked at Kira while they spoke, too afraid to see judgment
from her daughter’s eyes. The changed saddened Kira, as the slight
awkwardness in the air spoke of their forever altered
relationship.

"What were their names?" Kira asked, wanting
a small thing to remember her parents by. Names were simple, but
held so much meaning.

"Andrew and Lana."

Kira took another tissue to wipe at her face.
The story of her parents was sadder than she ever imagined. She had
hoped they weren’t dead, maybe just locked away somewhere. In a
way, it seemed like they had only just died because she had only
just found them. Kira watched the fading sun sink beneath the tree
line and watched the ruby wisps of cloud start to fade. Her mother
and her had been outside for a long time. Kira appreciated the
stories. She had needed the stories, but it wasn’t enough to make
her forget everything else.

"I have to ask why you never told me? Even
knowing I was adopted without knowing all the details? I could have
handled this new world of the conduits so much easier if every
other facet of my life wasn’t shattering along with it."

Kira’s mother eased from her seated position
and walked the three short steps required to stand before her
daughter. She knelt, cupping Kira’s hands in her own, trying to
close the distance that had sprouted between them.

"I just didn't know how. I wanted to. Your
father and I discussed it every year. First we excused it because
you were too young, then because you were going through puberty and
we knew that was a fragile time for building an identity. Then your
sister came around and we didn't want you to resent her, and then
you were in New York and so far away."

"And then I came home as an adult." Kira
pulled her hands away and returned them to the empty mug on the
side table. Her mother let her hands drop to the floor, as a tear
slid from her cheek.

"You’re still my baby. I didn't know how to
tell you without breaking the family apart."

"I understand, in a lot of ways I really do,
but I’m just not ready to let it go. I need some time to adjust, so
can we put the pause button on this conversation? I need a break
and time to think." Kira resituated herself in the chair so her
body leaned away from her mother’s. She needed to be alone, needed
to ruminate in peace. Her mother understood, and stepped backwards,
giving Kira space.

"Of course, I just want to give you one
thing." Her mother drew a small envelope from her pocket and put it
onto the table next to the now empty mugs of hot chocolate. "It's a
token I’ve had locked away for a while. Remember I told you that my
brother came to visit with you? Well, we took a single photograph
and I put it in a locket that I always meant to give to you when I
told you the truth. Let me know if you need me, but I’ll leave you
alone for a while."