Blaze (20 page)

And then, a feeling settled in her heart,
matched by Luke’s surging in her head. She felt light, as though
she were floating on a cloud and Luke’s body was the only thing
keeping her grounded. Pure gold seemed to pump through her veins,
making every touch richer, every emotion fuller. Every outside
distraction disappeared and a rush of fire pulsed down her
body.

They kept kissing until there was no air
left in their lungs and an innate will to live forced them apart to
catch a breath. Kira rested her forehead against Luke’s, breathing
heavily, and she slowly opened her eyes to find his. The yellows
and oranges in his irises seemed to dance they were so bright,
reminding her of flickering flames. Kira knew her eyes must be
burning a stark blue, but Luke never flinched, never looked
away.

She felt a smile tug at her lips, but from
the corner of her eyes, Kira saw real flames swirling, burning and
sinking into Luke’s skin.

Shocked, Kira pulled away from him,
clenching her fists down by her side.

“I’m sorry, Luke. I didn’t even realize,”
Kira looked away, cursing her lack of control. Luke captured her
small hands in his, covering the flames and letting them sink into
him.

“You can’t hurt me, Kira.”

But the cool air she was sucking in through
her lips had cleared Kira’s head.

“I have to go,” Kira said as Tristan’s
wounded face glimmered to life in her mind. How could she have lost
control like this?

“Kira,” Luke tugged on her hand, not letting
her leave. The elevator dinged opening behind her and Kira wrenched
free of his hold.

“I have to go,” she pleaded. “I’ll see you
tomorrow.” The door slid closed and Luke’s confused face
disappeared behind a wall of metal. Kira wished it would be so easy
to get Tristan out of her mind. But his features settled in like
stone, determined to haunt her.

He had only asked one thing of her, one
little thing, to not fall right into Luke’s arms. And though they
were open and waiting, Kira still didn’t think she would fly into
them so willingly or so quickly. Luke was her best friend, there
weren’t supposed to be feelings there. He was her guardian, her
protector. But that kiss was seared into her memory—was he right?
Was one kiss all it would take? Kira had mistaken his words for
typical Luke cockiness, but as her body stirred at the mere thought
of what just happened…

But no, she pushed the memory from her
head.

She needed to find Tristan. She needed to
apologize, even if he didn’t know what she was apologizing for.
Because Tristan could never know what just happened. It would kill
him, hurt him more than her powers ever could.

They had broken up, broken apart. But that
didn’t mean Kira wanted to lose him forever.

When the elevator slid open again, Kira ran
to the car and revved the engine to life. The sky started to darken
as the sun disappeared behind London’s buildings, sinking into the
earth, signaling the night.

She found her way back to the small pond,
hoping Tristan was waiting for her to return. Pushing aside the
swaying branches of the willow tree, Kira discovered an empty space
filled only with sleeping ducks.

As she continued down country roads, her
headlights fought with the misty air. Every shadow caught her
attention. Every shape in the distance looked like Tristan, looked
like a lone walking figure, until she drove close enough to
recognize them as a tree or a gateway or an animal. Her breath
caught in her throat as her eyes played tricks on her. Every moment
of anticipation made her heart race, and disappointment darkened
her thoughts the longer she went without finding him.

Kira’s eyes flashed to the GPS. Aldrich’s
house was moving closer and closer to her tiny car, or maybe it was
the other way around. But Kira felt like it was Aldrich who was
creeping up on her, suffocating her and pulling her towards
him.

And then, close to the ground, Kira saw
something pristinely white through the fog: a t-shirt connected to
a still body. She slowed the car, stuttering to a stop. Kira knew
it was Tristan. He sat next to the road with his knees bent, head
sunk in between them with hands gripping his neck. His shirt was
damp from the misty night and it clung to his strong shoulders.

After what seemed like an hour, he slowly
lifted his head up. His normally bright eyes were dark, matching
the scene around him, barely shining against the flood of the
headlights. They looked bloodshot, if that was even possible for a
vampire.

Kira turned the car off. She stepped out,
hesitantly. He watched her, never taking his sight from her as she
approached.

“Tristan?” Kira leaned against the hood of
the car, afraid to get any closer.

“Did you find him?” Tristan asked. His deep
voice broke through the silence in the air. Kira knew what he was
really asking.

“Nothing happened,” she said. The lie burned
her tongue. “I didn’t tell him anything.” Tristan’s muscles relaxed
and he let out a prolonged breath.

“Did you figure out a plan?”

“Yeah.” Kira nodded.

“Fill me in during the ride back to the
castle,” he said and stood up. Even in misery he was graceful. His
movements were fluid, like a panther in the night. But Kira forced
her gaze away. Tristan wasn’t hers to admire anymore.

“Tristan,” Kira said when they were both
settled in the car.

“Don’t,” he said, “let’s just get through
the next day.”

“Okay.”

Kira started the car and pulled back onto
the road. For the first few minutes, no one said anything. Tristan
stared out the window. Every time her gaze flicked towards him,
Kira was greeted with dark hair and the back of his neck.

“So what did you and…” He swallowed. “What
did you guys decide?” Kira filled him in—tactical discussions were
safe territory. They would go through with the ceremony, trapping
Aldrich at his weakest moment. The conduits would come and help
with the fight. And Aldrich would run away or Kira would kill him.
Those were the only two endings she saw.

“When will we make our move?” Tristan asked,
speaking for the first time since Kira started talking. He had been
nodding silently along with her words, agreeing to everything she
said.

Kira thought about his question. When would
be the perfect time to attack? Aldrich and her mother had told her
most of the process to becoming a vampire. Aldrich would need to
bite her, drink some of her blood. Her neck was the best spot—close
to her heart and a major artery—but Kira wouldn’t be offering
anything more than her wrist. Then everyone would wait a few
seconds for her blood to pass through his heart and circulate
through his veins, mixing with the already vampiric blood, blending
into his system until it started turning. It was the blood, they
said, that turned and gained qualities of a vampire. Blood always
had to change first.

And when Aldrich felt Kira’s foreign blood
transform to match his, he would cut his own hand and press it
against the open wound in her wrist, forcing his blood into her
body. Then, like a virus, the vampirism would enter and begin to
turn her normal blood. When all her blood had changed, the rest of
her body would start to follow.

Kira shivered at the thought, but knew what
she had to do.

“When he starts to flood his blood into
mine, that’s when you need to attack him. Go for the kill right
away,” Kira said. “He’ll expect me to struggle, but not you.
Aldrich will be caught completely off guard.”

“You sure you want to risk that? Letting him
go so far in the process?” Tristan asked, trying hard to keep any
bitterness from his voice.

Thinking of Luke’s steadfast denial that
conduits could turn, Kira nodded. “I can fight the change, I know
it,” she said softly, trying not to hurt Tristan any more than she
had to.

“Then there’s nothing else to talk
about.”

“I do have one more thing,” Kira said
quickly, before he had time to shut her out again. “Pavia, I need
to talk to her again. She’s hiding something, something that might
help us.”

“What do you mean?” Tristan asked. His
cloudy mood cleared a bit as genuine interest colored his
words.

“I think,” Kira started talking, not really
knowing what she meant. But then the realization hit. “I think
Pavia must have stolen my mother’s memories. When I met her, she
showed me her power, just the flash of an old memory. But it makes
perfect sense. If Aldrich ever did have my mother, Pavia could have
taken her memories and given them to this other vampire woman, the
one who looks like my mother. That must be how she knows so much,
so many personal details.”

“Yeah,” Tristan tapped his fingers against
his knee, thinking, “yeah, that makes sense. But I still don’t
understand how she looks so much like her.”

“Me neither,” Kira said and shook her head.
One more mystery for her to solve. “But maybe Pavia does. You need
to distract Aldrich tomorrow, distract him long enough for me to
sneak back into those tunnels.”

“Right after breakfast, I’ll pull him away
and tell him we need to talk in private. I’ll make sure to give you
as much time as I can, but I can’t promise more than an hour or he
may realize we’re up to something.”

Kira nodded, opening her mouth to discuss
their plan a little bit more.

“We’re about a minute away from Aldrich’s
hearing distance,” Tristan interrupted.

Knowing time had run out to really make
things better, Kira reached her hand across the car, latching onto
Tristan’s. “I’m so sorry. You know that, right? I wish things could
be different, that we could be together.”

Tristan kept hold of her hand, but didn’t
respond. Kira turned her attention back to the road and tried not
to listen to the seconds tick by in her head. They seemed long and
drawn out, passing too quickly but also not fast enough.

And then suddenly, Tristan looked at her and
said, “Kira, I know that Luke is upset, but does he have to call
you every five minutes? What is his problem? He lost. He’s got to
let it go.”

They had passed the line of Aldrich’s
hearing. The show had begun.

“I know Tristan,” Kira said, looking at the
hurt in his eyes even though his voice sounded like that of a
champion. “I told him I’m changing, that I wouldn’t be able to see
him again. It’ll just take some time for that to sink in, I
think.”

“Well, he has a day to get it together if he
ever wants to apologize for the way he screamed at you.”

“A day?” Kira asked, following the plan she
and Tristan had thought up. Aldrich was expecting the change to
happen tonight, but they had decided that that was too fast to put
the entire plan into action. The conduits needed a day to regroup
and Kira needed a day to get her feelings under control. They
wanted Aldrich to believe the delay was completely organic, not a
rallying day.

“Yeah, I think we need to push it off for a
few hours,” Tristan said, rubbing his thumb over the back of her
hand. “I don’t want our new life together to start while I’m angry
at Luke. I don’t want anything in my head but love.” His words
sounded sincere, but Kira saw the slight glisten to his lashes.

“Me neither,” Kira said, trying to keep the
sadness from her voice. “Why don’t you relax for a little while,
we’re almost back to the castle.”

Tristan nodded, turning on the music in the
car to drown out the silence. They had planned to talk more, to
explain more in the car for Aldrich to overhear. But it was too
much so soon. Both of their feelings were too raw, and Tristan
leaned back in his seat to close his eyes.

Kira hummed along with the songs she
recognized and kept going over the plan in her head. Much too soon,
the now familiar driveway appeared around the bend. Kira turned in
and Tristan pretended to wake to the sound of crunching gravel as
Kira approached the castle.

It was eerie how similar the trip was to the
first time Kira pulled in, so similar and yet so different. The
ruins to the side of the castle, with their twisting and turning
shadows, still frightened Kira. The castle loomed over them, still
menacing. The thought of Aldrich still pierced just a little. Kira
couldn’t quite cut the fear that he was onto them, that any minute
he would walk out enraged and ready to fight.

The only difference was that Kira felt alone
in her fight. Tristan was beside her, helping her, but they weren’t
a team—not anymore. And Luke, Kira didn’t know what to think about
it. Last time she drove to this castle, she was afraid Luke would
never speak to her again. Now Kira was frightened because speaking
to him, just talking, might not be enough.

And like the first time, Aldrich had heard
them. As soon as the car stopped, both doors popped open on their
own. The front door swerved open, revealing a silhouetted figure in
a dark suit.

“How was the trip?” Aldrich cheerfully
called to them.

“Difficult,” Kira said, not needing to lie
at all. Aldrich would know if she were lying. The next day would be
all about hard to discern half-truths. “But I did what I needed to
do.”

Tristan circled around the car and put an
arm around Kira, kissing her on top of her head as he did it.

“And how did Lucas take everything?” Aldrich
asked.

“As well as could be expected,” Kira said
with her thoughts focused on Tristan. “I think it came as quite a
shock.”

Aldrich laughed. Kira fought the urge to
kick him for finding even the pretend idea of Luke in pain funny.
“As long as he doesn’t come around with a false sense of chivalry,
trying to save his fair maiden.” Aldrich’s eyes flicked to Kira
with a hard look, a warning Kira thought. But maybe she was seeing
things…

“Luke definitely doesn’t have any false
ideas,” Tristan said with a grin. But he squeezed Kira’s arm at the
word ‘false’ and she knew what he was really accusing.