Ignite (Midnight Fire Series Book One) (26 page)

His body started to slump as the glass
emptied. Jerome refilled it, passing it back to John, and Tristan
didn’t move while it was poured in this time. When the third cup
was filled, Tristan strained his head up, arching to get all of
Kira’s blood, swallowing it willingly, and even in her weakened
state, Kira knew a change had occurred.

Diana let Kira fall to the ground and walked
over to Tristan’s side. They undid his chains and he stood quickly,
faster than Kira’s eye could process it. Her blood had strengthened
his body. He stretched his arms over his head, the muscles of his
stomach flexing with the movement, and he cracked his neck bones
before leaning forward to look at Kira.

All the fight left Kira’s body the moment
their eyes met. Tristan was gone. A sob escaped her lips and tears
dropped quickly from her eyes the longer she stared into his eyes,
which had become as hard as stone and colder than ice. She had
never seen him look at her that way, like less than food, like
vermin, even since the first time they had met. His pupils had
dilated, so the blue of his irises were almost paper thin. His
fangs were extended, blood dripped from his lips and he licked it
away, smiling the entire time. He hugged Diana to his chest, gave
her a deep kiss, bit her and then shoved her away, chuckling at her
hurt expression. Quick as a bullet, he ripped Jerome’s t-shirt free
of his body and used the rag to wipe the blood from his chest.

Then, as an afterthought, Tristan leaned over
Kira, licking her open wound. With her blood fresh on his lips, he
said, "Aren’t you going to run?"

Kira found the strength to back up. Diana she
could handle, Jerome and John she could handle, but this Tristan
was more than she could stand. How had her blood changed him so
much? He was more than animal. He was evil and she was the reason
he had changed. Kira stood, swaying on her woozy feet, trying not
to feel stabbing pains in her heart as he laughed at her
struggles.

"Tristan?" She asked meekly, reaching her
hand out as if she could recover some trace of the man she had
lost.

"Yes, honey," Tristan smiled, blood staining
his white teeth, and the word honey felt like a slap in Kira’s
face.

The sky confirmed what she felt in her bones,
the eclipse was still complete. There would be no refuge in her
power. With one last look at Tristan, one final gaze to see if he
was acting, one final search of the lines of his face for some
sign, Kira turned and ran away from the sound of the man she loved
laughing in the face of her death.

"I’ll give you a head start, little Kira,"
Tristan called. She winced as he used the name Diana had
condescendingly called her, but charged on into the woods beyond
her neighbor’s backyard, into the darkness where the eclipse had
stolen every hint of light that ever previously existed.

Kira limped on the ankle she was sure she had
broken because, with each step, a knife seemed to pierce her leg.
She was dizzy from the blood loss and her vision was receding,
warping into a tunnel, letting her see only the leaves directly in
front of her. Kira tripped on tree roots and leaned against giant
trunks to stabilize herself, and she caught her breath for a moment
before pounding forward again. Self-preservation was all Kira
thought about. Her instincts had taken over because her thoughts
had become too much to handle, and all she could do was concentrate
on running as far as she possibly could.

And then she heard the cackling: a shrieking,
high-pitched noise, right behind her. A finger, one she knew must
have belonged to Diana, poked her back, sending her flying
forwards, and Kira kept running. A hand gently caressed her cheek,
another slapped at her arm, another pulled on her hair and Kira
knew there was no escape. She felt like millions of ghosts were
pawing at her, invisible but tangible, and Kira just stopped, tired
of all the games, ready to see if this Tristan was so changed that
he was willing to kill her.

"I’m done," Kira said to the empty clearing
she stood in the middle of, knowing all four of them were close
enough to hear. To keep herself going, she had to think of Tristan
as a thing. Not as the human she knew, but as the vampire she
needed to kill.

"That’s no fun," Diana pouted and emerged
from the shadows.

A hand clenched down on Kira’s shoulder and
spun her around. She stared directly in Tristan’s face. He let his
fangs pop out and leaned down to her neck to finish the job. Kira
pounded her fists against his chest, trying in vain to hurt him,
but he stilled her easily.

Kira waited to feel his teeth puncture her
skin and drain the life from her. She knew that the real Tristan
would never go through with it and hoped he was in there somewhere,
fighting the bloodlust her cells had created within him.

Her body involuntarily jerked when instead of
teeth, she felt his cheek swipe gently against hers and heard him
breathe in the smell of her hair, the way he loved to do when they
were lying side by side in her bed and he thought she was asleep.
Kira bit her lip to keep from smiling. If this was a trick, it was
the cruelest one of all, because before she even realized it, Kira
let herself believe Tristan had been fooling them all the entire
time.

When his lips brushed against the sensitive
skin just below her ear and she heard him say, "I love you, too."
Kira allowed herself to smile.

A moment later, Tristan pushed her to the
side to punch the now charging Diana in the face.

Kira’s legs collapsed and she sunk down to
the ground, all her strength gone. For the next minute, all Kira
could do was watch as Tristan, rejuvenated and fortified by her
blood, threw three vampires around like rag dolls. They all ignored
Kira, too caught up in their anger at Tristan tricking them.
Thunder sounded every time one of their bodies flew into a tree
trunk, snapping the bark and causing the forest to wobble on its
foundations.

Kira looked up, past the tallest branch,
through the swaying leaves, at the sun. An ebony circle covered the
suns surface, but a halo of light stretched past the shadow,
fighting to touch back down to earth. After the excruciating wait,
the few minutes of total eclipse had passed. Kira felt more than
saw the moon move a fraction to the side. No visible change had
occurred, but with Kira’s connection to the sun, everything had
altered within her.

With her hands behind her back, Kira brought
a flame to life and let her power heal her. She felt the electric
current go through her veins, multiplying her blood cells, closing
the cuts that streaked across her skin from the branches she had
struck while fleeing, reconnecting the bones that had shattered in
her ankle, and, most of all, Kira felt the two little puncture
holes at her neck seal shut without a scar.

She jumped up, bringing her hands forward and
shooting fire at John, who had failed to taste her blood. He would
not be immune in the slightest, and quickly, Kira let the stream
arch up in the sky and circle down, encasing him from above. For
John, there was nowhere to run. Kira stopped paying attention to
Tristan’s fight, letting John have her full attention. She still
lacked the control over using her protective powers versus killing
powers, and before Kira knew it, John had collapsed into a pile of
flaming ash.

Kira looked at the sky. There was no evidence
of an eclipse anymore. As usual, she had lost track of time when
using her powers and she assumed Tristan had kept them away from
her. When she turned, Tristan and Diana had hold of each other’s
necks and were squeezing, racing to see who would be decapitated
first.

Kira started forward to help Tristan, but
tripped over the body she hadn’t noticed at her feet. Jerome lay
still with a gaping hole in his chest, next to the crushed remains
of his heart. Kira stifled a scream and jumped over him to escape
the gruesome sight.

Diana squeezed free of Tristan, realizing he
would have killed her first, and Kira used the open opportunity to
shoot a blaze right at Diana’s heart, crushing her against a tree,
not letting her escape. Kira wasn’t sure if enough time had passed.
She feared that Diana’s immunity hadn’t waned, but Kira’s emotions
put extra force behind the punch, and Diana had nowhere left to
run. The fight was over, but Kira was not playing nice this time.
Diana was evil, pure and simple, and evil needed to be destroyed.
Kira stepped closer, slowly, until her palm laid flat against
Diana’s chest, killing her all the faster.

"You don’t want to kill me, Kira," Diana
forced the words out, struggling to make a sound.

"Why not? You tried to kill me. You tried to
turn my boyfriend against me. You might have killed my best friend.
Give me one good reason." Kira leaned in with each word, staring
into Diana’s clear blue eyes, letting her meaning sink in.

"Your mother is alive and I know where she
is."

Kira jumped back, too shocked to maintain her
control, and in that split second, Diana disappeared.

"No!" Kira screamed, trying to run after her.
Tristan grabbed her around the waist, picking her up off the
ground.

"It’s useless. Don’t hurt yourself. Diana has
the gift of speed, even I couldn’t catch her."

"But, my mother?" Kira let Tristan hug her
close to him, as she started to cry at this new lost possibility.
Kira had given up on her parents ever since she learned of their
existence, but now she felt the loss all over again. She imagined
the woman of her vision, with long golden hair that almost sparkled
in the sun, and she wanted nothing more than to know her. She still
wore the locket and ring around her neck, and even now its weight
seemed heavier, seemed to weigh her down, until she broke free of
Tristan’s hold and reached into her shirt to bring it out. She
opened the picture, the sole image of her real family, and felt
like she had been punched in the gut. That was the most horrendous
trick Diana had played, because now Kira would never stop
wondering.

"Come on," Tristan lifted Kira up as if she
weighed nothing, and started walking through the trees back towards
her house.

"Tristan?" She asked, trying to push thoughts
of her mother to the back of her mind. He looked down at her,
waiting for the question she had prompted. Hoping it wouldn’t hurt
him, she said, "That was all an act, right?"

He stopped walking, set her down and cupped
her face in both of his hands. Staring into her eyes, he said, "I
swear it was. I hated every second of it, I promise. Never, ever
doubt that. For thirty years, I did evil things under Aldrich’s
control. All I did there was show you a part of my past that I
never wanted to let resurface." Tristan wiped her cheeks clean of
the salty tears she had let streak down and kissed her softly. "I
love you. If I had lost you, I don’t know what I would have
done."

"I love you, too." Kira reached her arms up
around his neck as he picked her up again. They both knew she could
walk, but it was much more comfortable this way, she thought as she
played with the short hairs at the base of his neck.

When they emerged from the forest into the
freshly cut but now blood covered grass of her backyard, Kira told
Tristan to let her go. She surveyed the damage, wondering how she
would clean it up, when she noticed the body, Luke’s body, slumped
under the porch where he had fallen from Diana’s throw. She
screamed and threw her hands up to cover the sound as it escaped
her mouth.

Instantly, Kira darted forward, dropping to
her knees beside him, leaning her ear down to listen for a heart
beat.

"Tristan, on my God, Tristan! Is he dead? I
can’t hear his heart. I can’t hear his heart." Kira was yelling,
but she couldn’t stop. Tristan forcibly moved her to the side,
leaning down, listening.

"I forgot about him," Kira said, hardly
understanding herself. How had she forgotten about Luke? Her
guardian, her best friend, her protector for all of these months?
Kira couldn’t breathe. She tried to suck in breath, but she was
hyperventilating from the shock. His eyes were closed, and the
normal healthy tanned glow of his skin had been replaced by the ash
gray now covering his body. She cradled his face in her hands. His
body felt warm, but cool compared to the normal heat of a conduit’s
skin. She pushed open one of his eyelids, but his pupil had rolled
back into his skull.

"Tristan!" She yelled again, and he sat up,
shaking his head.

"He’s not dead yet, but Kira, it’ll happen
any moment. His heart stopped. I don’t know for how long."

"No!" Kira wailed, and then repeated the word
over and over again, cradling Luke in her arms. He couldn’t be
dead. It wasn’t possible.

Kira thought of how he jumped on Diana,
risking everything to try and help her. She wasn’t worth it, she
realized, and she hugged him to her, letting tears fall freely.

Without even meaning to, her whole body began
to glow, not just her hands, and Kira had encased herself and Luke
in her power. Tristan was catapulted away, thrown onto the other
side of the yard and Kira kept her eyes closed, chanting, "No, no,
no, no," as if it were a prayer.

Her power seeped out. Kira felt it leave her
and melt into Luke’s body. She was draining everything she had into
his corpse, her very own life force.

"Kira!" She heard Tristan shout, distantly.
"Kira! You’re killing yourself. Stop!"

She felt hands grab at her, but she resisted,
not allowing anything to move her from Luke. She kept her eyes
closed, swaying back and forth, using all of the power she
possessed.

Time passed without her realizing and before
Kira even had the chance to let her power go, she was long gone.
Her body fell back, and hit the ground next to Luke’s—burned out,
limp and lifeless.