Blaze (11 page)

Her eyes were blue, bright light shards of
cobalt with orange burns along the edges. They seemed to glow as
they sunk into her skull, blinding Kira with their brightness. They
seemed to burn, almost alive like fire.

But no, her hands were burning. Flames
gathered on each palm, engulfing the entirety of her arms.

Kira turned to run, but before she could
take a step, fire blasted into her back and she was thrown face
first to the ground. She scrambled to stand, but the fire was
unceasing. It sank into her skin, latching onto her bones. It
coursed through her veins, bursting blood cells apart, traveling
closer to her heart.

Her hands were like claws, sinking into the
dirt, pulling for an escape. But her skin was melting away, turning
to ash in the wind until she could see boils sprout along her
forearms and bone stick out from the tips of her fingers.

The pain was unlike anything she had ever
experienced. She was burning. She was boiling alive. Even her sweat
was hot enough to sting. Her last ounce of strength was spent and
she was falling, falling into a black abyss, a bottomless hole. And
the flames chased after her, scorching her toes, raining down upon
her as she continued to fall, and fall, and fall…

Kira jerked awake.

She bolted upright and her vision swam with
the head rush, but she didn’t care. She heaved, forcing air into
her lungs. Her throat was dry. She couldn’t breathe. The air was
too thick and it scratched its way down into her burning lungs.
Kira clutched at her chest, willing her heart to slow down before
it burst apart.

“Kira?” Tristan’s hand was on her back,
trying to sooth her.

“Water,” she croaked out and he disappeared,
only to return a minute later with a glass of cold water in his
hands. Kira grabbed for it and greedily drank it down.

The chill brought her focus back. Kira
blinked away the black spots in her vision, slowed down her breath
and collapsed back against her pillow with wide eyes.

“Kira, what happened?” Tristan propped
himself up on one elbow and looked down at her. Kira forced herself
to smile.

“It was just a bad dream, nothing to worry
about,” she told him. But deep down, Kira knew it was so much more
than that. Already her mind was buzzing, trying to figure out what
it all meant. She had killed herself. This wasn’t just a simple,
brush-it-off nightmare.

Tristan sighed happily and ran his fingers
down the length of her arm. “I never thought the day would come
that I could look at you and know it wasn’t for the last time.
There’s no countdown anymore, Kira. We have all the time in the
world now.”

Kira wanted to mirror his excitement. She
wanted to believe that forever was just within reach, but for some
reason his words made her feel hollow inside.

“If we have all the time in the world, I
think I’m going to use some of it for a nap,” Kira said and rolled
over. She nestled her head in the pillow and closed her eyes.

“We just woke up,” Tristan laughed
quietly.

“True, but that doesn’t mean we can’t go
right back to sleep.”

Tristan pushed her hair to the side and
kissed her cheek. “I’m going down to speak with Aldrich. See you in
a little while,” he whispered into her ear before slipping off the
bed.

Kira stayed curled up in a ball, listening
to the soft shuffling of his feet on the rugs. She kept her breath
even, only releasing a shuddering sigh after the door behind
Tristan had clicked closed.

And then she felt alone. Completely and
utterly alone in the world.

Kira clutched her necklace, felt the
comfortable contours of her father’s ring, but then dismissed that
charm for the small little sun next to it. The edges were sharp,
pointed, but still smooth. And most of all, it made her think of
Luke.

For a moment, Kira could picture him right
there beside her. First, he would look around the room—at the white
tile floor, modern rugs and porcelain mantle—and mutter something
like, “well, this doesn’t scream ax-murderer at all.” Kira would
laugh while he continued on the rant. “Tile, in a bedroom? I guess
it beats a coffin, but seriously.” Maybe he would place one tanned
hand against the white wall and then his eyes would get that
mischievous look Kira was so used to seeing.

“Luke,” Kira would say sternly, chiding him
for whatever idea was already running through his head.

“What?” He would pretend to be innocent, but
then the truth would come out. “I was just thinking, wondering
really, what Aldrich would do if we threw a bucket of bright orange
paint on the wall. I’ve never seen a vampire temper-tantrum.” And
Kira would giggle.

But then she realized she was giggling. Her
vision of Luke evaporated, but her laughter remained for a second
longer, until she remembered yesterday. Luke was pissed at her and
for good reason. She had been horrible to him. She didn’t deserve
his jokes. She didn’t even deserve the mirage of his voice. But she
needed it.

Kira clutched the charm around her neck and
thought about Luke. She gathered her power, let her hand turn to
flame, and reached out with her mind to search for him. Blindly,
Kira called his name with her head, hoping his subconscious would
hear her plea.

But there was nothing. Luke was too far away
for Kira to hear and she felt as if she were suffocating again.
Kira ran from the bed and pushed the heavy black curtains to side.
In an instant, her entire room was glowing with sunlight. Kira felt
the heat sink into her skin and let it comfort and warm her. She
gathered two tiny flames on each of her palms, trying to heal
herself, but her fire wasn’t strong enough to heal the wounds of a
lonely heart.

She opened her eyes and looked up into the
sun, not caring that the bright light stung her pupils. She needed
the sun, it was the only thing she had left to comfort her. And
with that thought, Kira finally understood why she had woken up
feeling so hollow this morning.

She blinked away the sunspots in her eyes
and looked at the landscape below her window. Her room overlooked
the ruins of the old castle. While they had scared her the night
before, Kira saw the stones clearly this morning.

They weren’t scary, just sad. The old stones
were once the pillars of a glorious castle, an undefeatable
fortress that people might have feared in the middle ages. They
could have been battered by cannons, pierced with arrows, sliced
with swords or bombarded with bullets. But none of those things
brought these walls down. Time brought them down as it did with
everything. Some mortar got loosened by the root of an ivy vine and
soon enough an entire wall came crumbling apart. No one bothered
with repairs because by that time castles were old and out of
fashion. So the world continued turning, nature continued battering
this old castle, bringing it down stone by stone. Heavy storms
broke through the windows, winds toppled a column, and soon enough
this glorious castle was nothing but a pile of rubble on the
ground.

Looking at those ruins was like looking into
her own heart. Time would never stop. The world would never
disappear. And in the sobering morning light, Kira finally saw last
night for what it had really been. Not her impossible dreams coming
true. Not the beginning of perfect happiness. But an end—a
desperate attempt to hold on to something that had already slipped
through her fingers.

Time had already taken its toll. Time had
already ruined what she and Tristan had, but it wouldn’t ruin her.
Kira looked down on that castle with determination, not sadness.
She was content. She loved Tristan, and part of her would always
love him, but she had always known goodbye was inevitable. Even if
she never wanted to admit it, the thought had always been there in
the back of her mind.

Because she did love Tristan, but she loved
herself more. And she couldn’t do what he wanted. The cost of being
together was too great. Standing there in the morning sunlight,
Kira finally understood. She was the sun. She was the fire. And she
couldn’t give up her power or her soul just to be with him.

Chapter Seven

Kira had thought that the lie she had told
Luke would be the biggest in her life—that pretending to go to
Sonnyville all the while planning a trip to a foreign country would
be the hardest trick she would ever play.

But Kira was wrong. This was far worse.
Because until she uncovered what Aldrich was really up to, Kira
would have to fool Tristan with the dream of forever. And that was
truly unforgivable.

So as Kira walked down the grand staircase,
in jeans and a t-shirt rather than the frilly dress Aldrich had
left hanging in the closet, all she felt was guilt. It was a heavy,
wet blanket cloaking her, weighing her down. And it took everything
she had to shrug it off of her shoulders and put a smile on her
face before turning the corner to the dining room.

If you want a show, Kira thought at Aldrich,
I’ll give you a show.

“Good morning, everyone,” Kira chirped
happily as she entered the room. She looked at the woman sitting at
the table and deepened her smile. “Mom,” Kira said warmly before
taking her seat next to Tristan. Aldrich and her fake mother both
sat with full glasses of blood, but Tristan wasn’t sipping
anything. Two cooked eggs, bacon and toast were artfully laid out
on the table in front of Kira’s seat. Still hot, she thought
gratefully and decided she may as well gather her strength with
some food.

“Tristan seemed to think you were
indisposed,” Aldrich droned, “glad to see he was wrong.”

“I was just a little sleepy,” Kira said and
took a huge bite of food, wondering what sort of kitchen this house
had. Surely the servants needed to be fed and it seemed pretty
stocked, but what sort of vampire kept such a nice kitchen in his
house? Unless there were more humans here than she realized, Kira
thought darkly. “So what were you all talking about before I came
in?”

“You,” Aldrich replied. Tristan gave him a
stern look.

“About how the talk with your mom went last
night,” he said and rested his hand on her thigh reassuringly.

“How did it go?” Kira asked, trying to keep
the ice from her voice.

“I thought quite well,” the woman said, “But
there is so much more that I want to tell you.”

“Well that works out perfectly, because
there is a lot more I want to hear.” Like what you did with my real
mother and how you learned so much about her life, Kira wanted to
scream. Instead, she took a long sip of orange juice and swallowed
the words back down. Be cool, she chided herself.

“So…” Kira said, wondering how to make idle
chit chat with a man who probably wanted to kill her and a woman
impersonating her mother who also probably wanted to kill her.
“Nice day out,” Kira finally said. Weather was almost always a safe
topic, unless of course you were talking to vampires who hated the
sun, she realized a second too late.

“There’s a beautiful garden outside,” the
woman said, her face still plastered with a smile. “Feel free to
walk around. Aldrich has a marvelous sculpture collection.”

“Do you still have that Augustus
Saint-Gaudens we stole?” Tristan asked with a smirk.

Aldrich copied his expression before
replying, “Of course.”

Since when did Tristan treat Aldrich like an
old friend? Kira thought. Yesterday he was offering up endless
warnings about trusting this man and now he’s reminiscing about
days gone by?

“That’s a funny story. You should tell
Kira,” the woman said and Kira noticed that though her eyes were on
Tristan, her hand held Aldrich’s.

“What year was it? 1892?” Tristan asked and
Aldrich nodded. Kira couldn’t quite decipher the look in his eye.
It seemed almost like satisfaction, like all the pieces of his plan
were falling into place. Kira looked away and tuned into Tristan’s
story, which was already half-done.

“So we snuck into his studio, curious about
this second Diana statue he was putting together. And we found a
third copy that nobody knew about—an even smaller version—and we
took it. Saint-Gaudens must have realized, but he never told the
papers or the police. Not like we could have been caught anyway.”
Tristan finished with a laugh. His eyes were glazed over thinking
of the memory.

Kira couldn’t stand it, the camaraderie with
Aldrich. It was too much. Without realizing it, she was standing
and all three of them were looking at her.

“I uh,” Kira fumbled for an excuse, “I need
some fresh air. Might as well go see this infamous sculpture for
myself.”

With that, Kira walked out of the room,
right out the front door and into the daylight. At the edge of the
circular driveway, Kira saw a stone path and decided to follow
it.

The walkway took her around the side of the
house to the gardens in the back yard, and Aldrich wasn’t lying,
they were impressive. Box-like hedges cut geometric patterns
through paths of stone and within the triangles of crisscrossing
lines were mounds of colorful flowers. Jutting out from the flowers
were sculptures, maybe a dozen of them. Most of them were classical
figures cut from white marble, but a few were aged bronze. On the
far side, Kira saw the sculpture of a woman balanced on one foot
hoisting an arrow, and she realized that must of have been the
Diana they were talking about. Kira looked away. She didn’t really
want to relive that story time.

Like the inside of Aldrich’s home, the
garden seemed gaudy and too perfect to be really beautiful. Kira
preferred wildness, like the rose garden in London—gorgeous chaos.
She looked back at the castle behind her. It was masculine,
demanding. The stones were rough, some of the lines were uneven and
the design wasn’t quite symmetrical. The garden, with its pristine
and controlled grace, didn’t fit the building behind it.