Ignite (Midnight Fire Series Book One) (22 page)

He was sprawled across the table top, basking
in the sun with his hands crossed under his head and his foot
tapping to the tune playing only in his mind. Almost immediately,
he turned his face to meet Kira’s eyes. Her heart stopped and he
crinkled the corner of his mouth in a subtle greeting. Instantly,
Kira flashed back to the hours they spent lying in each other’s
arms on Saturday, when all conversation had ended and all there had
been were feelings. She had never been kissed so passionately, yet
held so gently and treated like a lady. He had respected her and
let her set the pace, which yes, ended at kissing.

Kira’s pulse started racing at the memories,
and she mused that her brain had probably been confused by the
complete momentum shift that could only have been caused by the
delightful torment of falling in love.

Kira mindlessly bit her lip, hiding the grin
that threatened to spread across her face and looked away first,
right into the eyes of Luke. He was dodging students, weaving his
way through the lunch crowd, and staring her down with a look of
relief and anger. Without hesitation, he pulled her into a bear
hug.

"What the hell happened to you? I thought
you’d died. Why didn’t you call me back?" He set her back down, but
kept his hands on her shoulders, ensuring Kira couldn’t run
away.

"Nothing," Kira avoided his question when she
saw the others making their way over. "We need to talk. Not here,"
she whispered and then shirked his hold to greet Emma, who squealed
loudly and hugged Kira in a vice-like grip.

"We were so worried. Oh my God. You don’t
just run out on a school dance like that."

"I’m fine, I’m fine." She said when Miles and
Dave leaned in to hug her as well. Jeez, she thought, they really
must have been worried. "My phone died and I completely didn’t
realize it. I’m so sorry." Kira shrugged her shoulders, feeling
terrible.

"So what happened?" Emma asked when everyone
had sat back down at the usual table. "One minute you’re dancing
with Carter Evans," Emma wiggled her eyes, "and the next you’ve
disappeared."

Crap, Kira thought. She had forgotten to
prepare a cover story for the rest of the gang. Eventually she
would have to tell Luke the truth, but what would appease them in
the meantime. Go with something gossip worthy, she thought, Emma
will do all the work. "You’ll never believe it, but Carter slipped
alcohol into my drink. I got totally drunk, and he started freaking
out, so he just drove me home. It was insane. I mean, he always
seemed like such a nice guy." As Emma’s mouth dropped, Kira smiled
to herself: perfect.

"Oh. My. God. What a creep! I can’t believe
this. That must be why he gets so many girls. He totally tried to
date-rape you." Okay, maybe too far, Kira thought, and interrupted
to rein Emma in.

"No, no. I think I just didn’t realize.
Someone else could have spiked the punch, I guess. I mean, he drove
me home. That was nice."

"Drove you home after he drugged you!" Emma
looked over at Carter, shooting daggers across the room with her
evil eye. Carter actually seemed to sense it, because he looked
over and quickly sank down into the sea of letterman jackets that
composed the football team’s lunch table. "Yeah, that’s right.
Hide."

"Emma," Kira grabbed her friend’s arm,
forcing her around. "Seriously, it was no big deal. I just went
home. I don’t even blame him." Woman scorned, Kira thought with a
mental shrug.

"So, where were you Saturday?" Luke
interrupted.

"Yeah, what did happen?" Emma let Carter go
and turned her attention to the bigger mystery.

"What do you mean?" Kira stared down at her
sandwich, taking it out of the Ziploc bag she had packed it in that
morning and pointedly ignoring her friends.

"I called you on Saturday, and you never
picked up. It rang, by the way, which is unusual for a dead phone,
and then I drove by your house and your Mom said you hadn’t come
home yet. Strange." Kira assumed from his sarcastic tone that Luke
was pissed, but the raised eyebrows and rage-filled stare really
cinched it.

"Um," Kira’s mind was racing. Nothing would
sound convincing at this point. "I snuck in after they were
sleeping and didn’t wake up until like four. You know,
drinking…hangover," Kira nodded, trying to sound convincing as she
let the sentence trail off. Under the table, she pinched Luke,
hoping he would connect it to conduit business, and let it go. He
understood, and Kira sensed he knew it was conduit business all
along, but wanted to make her squirm.

"Damn," Dave chimed in. "Sounds like Carter
really got you wasted."

"Totally," Kira buried her face in her
sandwich again and let Emma take up the conversation, telling
stories about the parts of the party Kira had missed out on.
Apparently a bunch of guys from the basketball team pantsed a
cheerleader. Kira was actually disappointed she had missed it.

The lunch hour rolled to an end, and Luke
grabbed Kira’s hand as everyone started flooding from the
cafeteria.

"Come with me," he instructed, leading her
against the crowd towards the back door. Kira let him pull her
along.

Just as they reached the door, she took one
last look across the empty tables and through the windows at
Tristan. He was sitting up now, his white T-shirt a little rumpled
from the breeze, and he was returning her gaze. His eyes were
pained, almost like he had been waiting for her eyes all lunch hour
and hated to be the afterthought Kira had as Luke took her away.
Kira wished she could give him one quick peck on the lips, letting
him know he had been in her thoughts all along, but she was shoved
through the door instead.

Tristan’s eyes stayed with her as she and
Luke snuck around the school grounds towards the parking lot. Kira
knew she had to fess up, tell Luke everything, and just pray he
would be all right with it.

She silently eased into Luke’s car, letting
him drive wherever he wanted to go to talk. Kira thought Luke had
maybe expected it. He had to have known she had been keeping things
from him, especially things about Tristan. It wasn’t fair to Luke,
she realized, to be lying and going behind his back when he had
given up everything to help her inherit her powers.

Luke pulled over next to a big empty
playground, one slumbering until the town kids all got let out of
school. He walked across the open field toward the jungle gym and
Kira followed. They sat on old swings that were covered in flakes
of rust and squeaked in the breeze. Kira played with the woodchips
at her feet, waiting for Luke to start.

"I’m not an idiot, you know."

"I know," Kira said softly.

"Ever since he saved you on the beach, I knew
something was going on. I just, once you realized who you are, I
never thought you’d be so stupid." Luke’s eyes were boring into her
head, daring her to challenge him, to say it was a lie. "I mean,
he’s a vampire. We were made to kill them."

"Not all of us," Kira spoke and finally
looked up from the ground. "You’re a Protector. You see the good in
them."

"That’s what I’ve been taught Kira, but we
all know the truth. There is no good in them. A vampire can’t be
saved."

"That’s not true." Kira felt her throat
constrict. If Luke were right, there would be no hope for her and
Tristan, not ever. She couldn’t let herself believe his words.

Luke moved his hand to hold hers on the
swing. "It is. Listen to me and trust me, because I for one have
never lied. Conduits have been alive for thousands of years and in
all that time, not a single vampire has been saved. They are evil
Kira, and any Protectors who don’t believe it are just fooling
themselves."

"Maybe you can’t understand this, but I
swear, Tristan is different."

Luke started laughing, a dark and hollow
sound that turned into a sigh after a few moments. "If he’s so
angelic, what did he tell you about Bethany? Remember my
ex-girlfriend, the one I saw him eating?"

"He swore to me that he hasn’t had anything
but bagged blood in decades. And, I believe him. He said he was
saving her, closing the wound after Jerome had bitten her." Kira
shook her head, defiant against the charge. She knew Tristan.

"And you believe him? Just like that?" Luke
released her hand, swinging away from her in his frustration.

"I do." She stood her ground. If Luke
actually got to know Tristan, he would see it too. She knew he
would.

"Kira, you just don’t understand. You don’t
know enough. I’ve known people who went away to fight vampires and
never came back. I’ve been part of a search party to rescue a
Punisher from being held captive and tortured. The world is a much
darker place than you realize. And, I joke and I make fun because
you have to be happy or you won’t survive, but there’s a different
side of things you’re just too naïve to see."

"I’ve seen some things," Kira said, lifting
her hand away from the chain and letting her palm face the sky. She
brought a flame up, small and controlled, and let it dance along
her fingers. She threw a tiny ball of light up in the air, catching
it with her other hand and absorbing the fire back into her
skin.

"I had a vision of my parents’ death. I
relived it, and I think I know more about the world than you
realize." Kira stretched her arm out and placed a palm on the fresh
cut she had noticed on Luke’s bicep. She felt the skin underneath
close shut and seamlessly meld together, then took her hand
away.

He let out a breath she hadn’t realized he
had been holding. Kira looked at him, at the freckles that spanned
from cheek to cheek and the slightly crooked bend of his nose that
was beautiful in its strangeness. Kira noticed the luminescent
quality of his hair and finally the flaming irises they both
shared, but she saw a difference for the first time. He always
looked on with concern and fascination, but now sadness and maybe
even defeat rimmed those eyes.

"What happened in your memory?" Luke
asked.

"It was like you said about the conduit
societies. I was a baby and I was playing around with my power,
trying to control it and make my parents smile. But then we were
jumped by vampires and they were killed while I hid under a bush,
powerless to stop anything."

"I’m sorry," Luke said and reached for the
hand Kira had let dangle beside her swing. She shrugged her
shoulders, trying to act indifferent, as if the past was just that,
in the past. But his hand was warm in hers, keeping her connected
to real life and she appreciated it. "How’d you remember? Or did
you dream it?"

"It was Jerome and John actually," Kira said.
She continued to hold onto his hand, which now seemed more like a
lifeline, and then told him about what had happened. How John and
Jerome had almost killed that girl, about Diana’s sudden
appearance, and a little bit about her afternoon with Tristan and
his history. Luke listened quietly, and Kira observed as his morose
frown was overtaken by worried stress lines.

"I don’t like it," he finally said, "revenge
is the worst kind of evil."

"But Tristan said it would be fine, that
Diana wouldn’t be able to do anything to make him go bad." Luke
nodded absently, but Kira could tell his thoughts were wandering
into ominous territory. "What? What is it you’re not telling
me?"

"Nothing," Luke said, still half-aware.

"Come on," Kira said and jerked on his hand,
almost pulling him from the swing, but at least gaining his
attention.

"It’s just, Tristan might not have a choice.
Conduit blood, it’s like a drug to vampires. It makes them go
crazy."

"But he would never bite me." Kira said
dubiously, flashing back to the moment in the gym when she had been
cut and all of the fighting had ceased—even Tristan had been
totally distracted by her blood, and, for a second, had become
completely animalistic because of it. When Diana smeared some on
his lips, he couldn’t resist taking a taste.

"Willingly, no. But, what if it’s not in his
control?"

"How could they do that?" Kira twisted in her
swing, coiling the chains and facing Luke. "I have my powers now.
They can’t surprise me anymore. I’ll fry them."

"All I’m saying is they have a plan, or at
least the start of one. And, it involves you, and Tristan eating
you, and some factor we don’t see yet. This is serious and we need
to prepare somehow."

Kira sighed and turned slowly in a circle,
winding the chain holding the swing a few more times. She lifted
her feet off the ground to let her chair unravel, and spun around,
bouncing from side to side, done with these dark conversations that
seemed to be creeping further and further into her life. When the
world was a blur of green grass, blue sky and sunlight streaking
past her eyes, unidentifiable except for the array of colors, she
felt much more at peace, like a carefree child. All the worries
seemed to slip away when there was nothing to focus on but the wind
in her hair and the dizzying of her brain.

When the twirling stopped, Kira looked at
Luke, who watched her with a slight smile finally showing on his
features. She let her feet fall to the wood chips, took a few steps
back to gain some leverage and then released, surging forward. Kira
pumped her feet, using her arms for extra power, and propelled
herself forward with every lean back and thrust of her legs.

Luke began to swing next to her, catching up
to her height quickly with his longer legs. Their clothes fluttered
in the breeze and Kira’s hair flew all around her. Her butt jumped
off the seat as she started beating gravity’s pull, just for a
moment, and Kira felt like a kid again, when she was so young that
she thought she could swing high enough to flip over the bar and
even gain wings, like a fairy.

Finally, the time came when Kira knew she
couldn’t go any higher. She pulled her forearms and shins in,
racing backwards one more time, and then gravity shoved her
forward. She leaned back, stretched her feet out and let go of the
swing. She felt the chair seat slide out from underneath her as she
catapulted forward, flying through the air while her limbs flailed
ungracefully, until the ground seemed to rise up and smack against
her feet. She rolled forward, falling onto the grass beyond the
wood chipped corral while dead leaves crunched into her hair.