Ignite (Midnight Fire Series Book One) (23 page)

Kira turned her head, watched Luke as he
landed beside her with a thud and a somersault, and started
laughing.

"I haven’t done that in years," Kira said as
she stared at the sky. She watched the clouds blow by, changing
from marshmallow white to smoky ebony to brilliant gold as they
passed in front of the sun.

"Me neither. I think I can wait another ten
years before trying it again though. I can actually feel a massive
bruise growing on my butt right now." Luke groaned and rolled over
onto his stomach.

"Home?" Kira said, wondering if they had
talked about Tristan enough, hoping Luke had all the answers he
needed for the moment.

"Home," Luke said and slowly stood up. He
leaned over Kira, grabbing the hand she offered, and pulled her
from the ground’s clutches. She dusted the dirt and squashed leaves
from her clothes, and followed him to the car.

The ride home was safe. They steered clear of
vampire related topics and instead talked about their friends and
the holidays. Every time Kira looked over at Luke, she knew he was
only half-present. He was her guardian and her friend, and she new
he must be worried about her safety, but Kira couldn’t think of
anything else she could do.

As they turned the corner onto Kira’s street,
Luke slammed on the breaks and Kira’s head almost flew through the
front windshield because she had tucked the strap of her seatbelt
behind her back.

"Luke! What the hell?" She whipped around to
berate him, but noticed the hard look in his eyes. She turned
slowly in her seat to follow his line of vision as it trailed right
to the steps of her front porch where Tristan was casually sitting,
leaning against the rail.

Kira’s pulse started to race at the sight of
him. The whites of his eyes reflected the headlights and seemed to
glow, while the rest of him, dressed in dark jeans and a black
t-shirt, melted into the night. He saw the car and gracefully stood
up, like a panther easing out of a nap. Kira smiled at him, feeling
giddy, before twisting back around to say her goodbye to Luke.

He, she noticed, was not smiling at all.
Instead, he had a vice-like grip on the steering wheel, one that
was stopping the circulation to his fingers. His stare was so
forceful, Kira feared beams of sunlight would burst from his pupils
and melt his front windshield.

"Luke?"

He twisted his hands around the wheel while
the leather wined in protest. His entire body had tensed up and
Kira noticed the bulge of muscles under his long-sleeve shirt.

"Luke?" Kira hesitantly extended her hand,
barely touching his shoulder before he snapped his attention to
her, still stiff, and now with blood-shot eyes from the strain of
not blinking.

"Look Kira, I tried to be a good friend and
stay calm, I really did, but how can you be so blind?" He took his
hands from the wheel, running his fingers through his hair,
practically ripping the strands from his scalp. "He’s a killer,
okay? A killer. It’s what they are. Every time he sees you, part of
him wants to kill you. Every time. And, I know he promised it
wouldn't happen, but you’re a fool to believe him. An idiot."

Kira reached for Luke’s arms, trying in vain
to calm him down. She tried to speak, but he cut her off.

"No, okay, no. You have to hear this. He
lives by drinking human blood. Do you understand? Human blood and
human blood, only. And he’s going to live forever while you get old
and die, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing in this world
that will change that. Even if you wanted to become a vampire, you
couldn’t. There’s no need to risk your life dating him when he’ll
just kill you eventually." Luke was yelling now, fogging up the
windows with his spat out words. "Maybe not now, but what about
when you’re fifty or sixty and he still looks eighteen? What then?
When you’re old and wrinkled, he’ll kill you while you sleep and
you won’t even know until it’s too late because you trust him."

He made the word trust sound dirty, and Kira
listened to his heavy breathing, failing to think of any response.
The door behind her swung open and Kira jolted backwards, into the
hardness of what she knew could only be Tristan’s chest.

"While I do love seeing you act like a
complete ass, Luke, I’ve heard enough. I won’t just sit here and
listen to you talk crap about me. If you want to tell me something,
say it to my face or shut up." Kira watched Luke grow angrier by
the second. She was too afraid to move; too fearful any action she
made would just add fuel to the fire. "Kira?" She noticed a hand
stretch out in front of her, an offering of escape.

"Stop." Luke grabbed her around the wrist.
Yup, Kira thought, I’ll just stay right here and not move a muscle.
Luke was glaring at a spot just over her shoulder, and based on the
tingle she felt in her neck, Kira guessed Tristan’s face was right
about at that spot.

They sat like that for what seemed like an
hour to Kira, a complete standoff, before Luke released her hand.
She thought, for a futile moment, that he had relented and was
going to end the absurdly macho fight. Until he reached for the
handle, jumped out of the driver’s seat and sprinted around the
front of the car with his hand extended.

Kira knew what he was doing before the fire
shot from his hand. "Luke!" She shouted to no avail, and Tristan
was hit right in the chest with the full force of Luke’s power. He
flew off the ground, sailing through the air to land on his back.
Kira knew he could have run away had he wanted to, that the fire
was hurting him but was meant to remove him more than to harm him.
Still, he let Luke attack, not fighting back, but Kira saw the
strain on his features and the taunt pull of his lips. She leapt
from the car, directly into Luke’s flames, and let them absorb into
her body.

It was the first time Kira had absorbed
another conduit’s power. She felt alive, electrified from the tips
of her toes to the strands of hair on her head. She let his power
funnel into her, felt it spread throughout her limbs and warm her,
and Kira almost began to feel like she was pulling the power from
Luke rather than he pushing it into her.

"Luke, stop. Someone might see. You have to
stop." He waited a second, full of internal struggles and rage,
before ending his onslaught.

"Listen to me." He opened his mouth in
protest, but Kira silenced him by covering his lips with her hand.
"No, listen. This thing with Tristan is something I have to do. I
know you don’t understand it, I know you hate it, but I need you to
respect me and my decisions, and leave him be." She released Luke’s
mouth, but he remained silent. She stepped back, forming a triangle
between the three of them, looking from one boy to the other. "This
goes for both of you, no fighting. None at all, or I will figure
out something really terrible to do to both of you. So just stop.
I’m not some toy to fight over. I make my own choices and nothing
will change that. So Luke, just go home."

Kira read the emotions that fluttered across
Luke’s face, from anger towards Tristan, to embarrassment over his
own actions, to what Kira dared say was apologetic for her sake.
Regardless, he silently walked to the other side of his car, hopped
in, and drove away without looking back.

"Well, now that he’s gone…" Tristan supplied,
and Kira faced him, noting the smug smile as he sauntered over and
tried to hug her.

"Hold on." She put her palm against his
chest, stopping him. "Thank you for not fighting him or running
away, but you can’t taunt him either, which you know perfectly well
was your intention when you opened the car door." He had the
decency to look guilty. "Promise?"

"Promise," he murmured, looking like a little
boy whose favorite video game had just been taken away. But, then
his features brightened. "Care to seal it with a kiss?"

Kira’s insides felt like mush instantly. Her
annoyance had melted to make room for the butterflies now flying in
her stomach. She reached up and kissed him on the lips, ending it
too soon because she was afraid her parents would walk outside at
any moment after all of the commotion.

"What did you come over for anyway?" She
questioned, all the sudden curious to know why he had been waiting
outside her house.

"I saw you and Luke leave. I just wanted to
see how everything went. Clearly, not all that well."

Kira shrugged. "Until about ten minutes ago,
things were going great." She presented him with a wry smile, but
he became suddenly alert and jerked his head towards her house.

"Your mom is about to come outside." Kira’s
eyes widened and she pushed him away.

"Hide!" A moment later, the front door
creaked open.

"Kira, honey? Is that you?"

"Yeah, mom." Kira walked closer to the house
and out of the darkness. "I’m just making a phone call, be right
in." Her mother nodded, concern flashing in her features, before
retreating back inside the house.

"Movie?" Tristan asked from somewhere beyond
Kira’s sight. She nodded, because what else could you do if a
really hot guy asked to watch a movie with you in your bedroom.
Kira knew he would sneak in silently, using all the speed and
agility he could, and she prayed there were no stray pairs of
underwear lying around when he got there.

The next few weeks passed quickly for
Kira.

She and Tristan continued to date in secret,
meeting at the beach or some private place from his past that he
wanted to share with her. They picnicked at an old lighthouse that
was almost broken down and ready to be demolished, but had an
amazing view of the ocean. He snuck into her room after her parents
went to sleep, so they could lie in each other’s arms and whisper
sweet nothings. Kira was coming to love the way his eyes softened
when they met hers, how he would gently brush her cheek with his
thumb, holding her face as though it were the most fragile thing in
the universe. He shared his travels with her, the years he spent in
Europe, his impressions of English accents, how frightened he had
been on his first African safari, before he had realized he could
do more damage to the animals than they could to him.

And, most of all, Tristan shared his art, the
most personal part of him. He had sold most of it throughout the
years, but he showed Kira some of his favorites: models in Paris,
architecture from Russia, the natural beauty of the American west,
and, most of all, his family and the friends he had met along the
way. Each drawing held a different story, a different facet of
Tristan. Kira could tell which aspect of his personality fit with
each work of art, and it was more intimate than talking could have
ever been.

Sometimes, Kira wished she could let Luke in
on some of these private moments, when Tristan seemed more human
and more vulnerable than ever. Maybe then he would understand, but
ever since the night outside her front yard, Luke hadn’t even
spoken of Tristan and Kira wouldn’t be the one to break the
silence. In school, she stayed around Luke, eating with her friends
and pairing up with him in class. If Luke caught her and Tristan
swapping secret glances or talking quietly to one another, Kira
would see his features harden and his eyes cloud over with
frustration. She needed him as her best friend, so she would
quickly pull away, only managing to pain Tristan in the
process.

Luke continued to train her, teaching her
precise control of her powers, like where to aim at a vampire to do
the most damage or how to conserve her energy while still firing a
deadly shot. She was excited to learn more about her heritage and
about the conduit society.

But, all the while, in the back of Kira’s
thoughts lurked dark imaginations about Diana and the plan she was
concocting.

One night before falling asleep, Kira felt a
lump under her bed. She reached down, confused, only to find the
old, dusty book she had stolen from Luke but had completely
forgotten about. Eager for more information than Luke was sharing,
she turned on her reading light and settled into her cushy
pillows.

For an entire week, during her free moments
without either boy and in the absence schoolwork, Kira read
nonstop. The first few chapters discussed the history of the
conduit society, very similar to what Luke had already told her
about the split between the Protectors and the Punishers, how the
difference of opinions began and how a natural genetic mutation
formed the two different powers and breeds. The anonymous author
discussed different opinions on vampires, whether they had souls or
not, and one conduit historian actually believed that those of the
ancient society, when the Punishers and Protectors had been one
breed like Kira, had special powers of healing and knew the secret
to saving a vampire’s soul. Kira believed it, even though the other
historians in the book discarded the theory, stating, like Luke,
that no vampire in history had been saved.

Finally, Kira got to the fourth chapter, all
about her kind, the mix that commonly meant chaos and destruction.
She turned the page, excited to get cracking, but the chapter was
gone. She skipped to the final chapter, about ancient prophecies,
and those pages were missing too. The only pieces of evidence that
those chapters existed at all were the fringed edges belonging to
pages cut cleanly out with scissors or a knife.

Kira was furious; she wanted to know what
this group of historians gathered under an anonymous title had to
say. She felt, deep in her soul, that something had been revealed
about her true calling—not for destruction, but for life. There was
something in the prophecies that would help her. She knew it.

So, even though it was long past midnight,
Kira crept down the stairs, through the dark living room of her
house, and out the front door. She slid into her car and reversed,
not turning her headlights on until she was already down the road
and out of the line of sight from her house.