Blaze (25 page)

And when Kira finally felt calm for a
moment, felt like the ash had stopped pressing forward, had stopped
gaining ground, she knew she had to fight.

Holding her Protector powers secure around
her heart, Kira delved into the other side of her fire, the deeper
side. She focused on her anger, letting herself go to the place
beyond control for the first time in a long time.

Kira focused on Aldrich, on his snide
comments and sidelong glances that held promises of terror. The
image of her mother’s dead body being thrown to ground like a play
toy for a starving vampire boiled her blood, infusing her power
with more strength and perseverance. Every moment Kira ever spent
hating a vampire, fighting a vampire, resisting a vampire, popped
into her head in an endless stream of clips bringing her powers to
a breaking point.

This thing would not consume her. Every
fiber of her being rejected the very idea of becoming one of them,
and Kira poured that belief into her powers as they burst from her
heart in a relentless stream of heat.

At first, her fire slammed against the black
liquid cooling her veins. The two powers crashed together, like two
titans in a mortal battle, reverberating down her insides with a
boom Kira was sure could be heard outside of her head.

Her flames singed the tar, burning it,
melting the solid mass that was hardening her limbs. The blackness
responded, shrouding her flames from the light like an eclipse
inside her body.

But unlike the evil trying to consume her,
Kira had passion and conviction on her side. She refused to give
in, refused to back down, and for that her fire pushed through.

At first, the retreat was slow and Kira used
all her power to chase the sticky rubber from her veins, letting
her warm blood return. But soon, her flames melted the blackness
further, until it was slick oil sliding out of her veins, oozing
from her pours in as quick of an escape as possible. Her skin felt
grimy on the outside, like a greasy residue had been left behind,
like she couldn’t get totally free of the substance.

But her insides were hot and light once
more, and distantly Kira felt her senses return. Her back was cold
against the table. Her joints ached from lying atop the hard
surface. Sugary sweetness licked at her nostrils, and Kira
remembered the flowers strewn across the floor.

Then hands were shaking her shoulders,
bouncing her from side to side, and jerking her neck painfully. She
fell back against the table again and a heavy body fell on top of
her. It was trembling. Slowly, muffled sobs broke through her
ears.

“Kira!” A deep voice cried. She recognized
Tristan’s agonized scream. She wanted to comfort him, to calm him,
but her limbs still felt like jelly.

The pressure lifted and she heard the
accusation. “What did you do?” Tristan hissed.

“I turned her,” came the calm reply. “I did
exactly what I said I’d do.”

“But it’s impossible,” Tristan said. Kira,
feeling more and more like herself with each passing second, began
to wonder what she had missed. She was eager to join the fight, but
too interested to see what information Aldrich would give up while
he thought she was still under the thrall of the change.

“Not impossible.” Kira could envision him
shrugging in her head. He was only too happy to have the power.

“Conduits can’t change,” Tristan told him
firmly.

“No they can’t,” he said gently, “but Kira
is so much more than a conduit.” She felt fingers brush her hair
from her forehead. “And soon, she will be so much more than even
that.”

“What do you mean?” Tristan asked, his voice
more curious than angry, almost hopeful as if something he had
stopped dreaming might still somehow come true.

“It is a common misconception that the mix
of each conduit breed results in a mixed-breed, a half-blood if you
will. But they’re all wrong, Tristan. It’s the conduits that are
less, that are divided. Kira is pure. She is the joining of two
halves. Two conduits do not make a mixed-breed, Tristan, they make
an angel. An original.”

“An angel?” Tristan asked. His voice was
distant, disbelieving. Kira felt his cool hand cup her cheek.
Behind closed eyes, Kira could imagine his face peering down at
her, roving over the curves of her face.

“Yes, an angel. And angels can do what
conduits can’t,” Aldrich paused and Kira felt a tug on one of her
curls, “they can fall. And when angels fall, there is no one on
this earth who can stop them.”

Kira let those words sink into her still
recovering mind. The Punisher had been right. She was falling,
becoming an unstoppable evil, something no conduit could burn and
no vampire could bite.

“What will happen when she wakes up?”
Tristan asked softly. The glimmer of hope behind those words was
unmistakable, and Kira felt anger boil in the pit of her stomach at
Tristan’s response.

“She won’t,” the female vampire said from
across the room. Kira wondered if she still looked like her mother.
If when she opened her eyes, there finally would be a stranger in
front of her, a stranger she would be happy to kill.

“But—”

“Oh she will wake, Tristan, but she won’t be
the Kira you remember,” the woman continued. Her tone was spiteful,
nasty. Her eyes flashed in Kira’s mind, deep and full of loathing.
“If the turning goes the way we hope, her soul will be broken and
she will emerge as a wild, uncontrolled beast.”

“Kira would never let that happen,” Tristan
said, completely confident.

“She won’t have a choice,” Aldrich said
calmly, “the change will drive her to insanity. When she wakes only
one thing will consume her thoughts: blood. And not just any
blood—conduit blood. Kira will be our reckoning.”

A rage-filled growl broke through the room.
A huge crash sounded next to Kira’s ear and she heard Aldrich
chuckle softly. By her feet, Kira heard Tristan curse at him and
yell again.

She flexed her finger, testing part of her
body to make sure it responded the way she wanted. Her finger
obeyed, moving the precise way Kira had ordered it to. And she was
about to jump and show Aldrich he had been wrong, ready to kill him
and any knowledge he had in his small head, but something else
broke through her consciousness before she could order her feet to
stand.

A sense of conviction and honor pulsed into
her head. Hot pride and perfectly simmering love punctured the
veins around her scalp, and words started whispering inside her
mind.

“I’m coming, Kira. I’m coming. Just keep
holding on. I swear, we’ll be there soon. Just keep fighting. For
you. For me. Keep fighting.” And the encouragement continued in an
endless tirade that puffed her chest with hope.

Luke.

He was close, nearly here and projecting his
thoughts to give her the strength he somehow knew she would need.
The same golden warmth she had felt during their kiss began to
spread from her heart, fixing her bruised soul.

Keep fighting, he whispered over and over in
her head. Kira knew to listen.

“We have company,” the woman said and Kira
snapped back to her surroundings, letting a sense of Luke continue
to funnel through her body while she turned her direct attention
back to the words being thrown around above her head.

“I hear them,” Aldrich said roughly. “I had
hoped it wouldn’t come to this, Tristan. I really didn’t think you
would betray me.”

“What do you know about betrayal?” Tristan
cut. His voice was laced with pain, and Kira screamed against her
instinct to open her eyes and save him from whatever trouble he was
in.

“More than you will ever know.”

And the front door banged open and heavy
boots came storming in, pounding against the marble floors.

“Kira!” She heard the yell in her mind, her
heart and her ears. Luke was here. Finally, Kira let herself move
as her lips tugged into a slight smile. “Kira!” His next yell was
strangled, filled with hatred and fear.

And Kira finally realized what she must look
like, fallen and unmoving on the slab of table like a fresh kill
ready to be eaten. Could he tell that her dress was red and not
blood stained? Was it both?

Kira turned her head towards the sound of
Luke’s voice, blinking her eyes to get adjusted. His golden head
came into focus first, alight from the candles in the room. Relief
flashed across his features when their eyes met, but it was short
lived as the doors crashed together, sealing the dining room off
from the intruding conduits. Luke pounded his fists against the
wood to no avail.

In one fluid movement, Kira slid from the
table and jumped to her feet, bringing flames to her hands and
preparing to fight.

The instant Aldrich’s gaze landed on the
fire dancing between her fingers, his mask fell. Gone was the
confident bravado, the sophisticated arrogance. His eyes
immediately turned into ebony pools, slick like the oil Kira had
felt in her veins. His fangs popped out, still stained slightly red
with her blood. Like an animal ready to pounce, his posture fell to
a crouch and his head sunk lower so he looked hungrily at her under
hooded brows.

And suddenly the table slammed into her
legs, dragging Kira backwards and pummeling her into the wall. She
felt the crunch of her thighbones as they snapped and a wail broke
from her mouth unexpectedly from the pain. Tristan’s voiced
screamed too, and Kira looked over to see him stuck against the
wall, pinned by antlers sinking through his flesh into the hard
plaster behind him.

Using her powers, Kira forced her bones back
together, dulling the pain and reattaching muscles torn to shreds
in Aldrich’s rage. He saw what she was doing and pushed the table
against her harder, so even her power couldn’t totally heal the
indigo bruises lining her skin.

“Stop!” Kira gasped, reaching for some tool
to use against him. She stuck out her hand, aiming towards the
woman, and released her powers without looking to see if the face
of her mother was still plastered dishonestly on the vampire’s
skin.

Immediately, Kira felt the familiar feel of
a vampire bubbling beneath the onslaught of her strength. She
forced the candles around the room to bend to her will and the
fires burned brighter all around her, almost setting the room
ablaze.

“I will kill her if you don’t let us
go.”

“Be my guest,” Aldrich hissed and slowly
continued to push the table into her legs as the chandelier above
their heads began to jingle.

Aldrich was immune and Kira would have to
break through that, so she forced out everything she could, sending
fire out through her palms, her hands and the skin all the way up
to her elbows.

Kira could feel the strong barrier drinking
her blood had placed around Aldrich, and her power rolled off him,
practically bouncing from his skin. She was half-protector and
half-punisher so he was immune to both of her flames, but Kira knew
she could break through. She just needed time. The other vampire,
however, was a different story. She had never tasted Kira’s blood
and Kira felt her fake mother’s hair singe, burning off. Her skin
flaked, made crispy by Kira’s power.

Soon enough, she was just a pile of ash
dusting the petals along the ground. And Kira felt no remorse at
killing this vampire who had mocked her mother and tried to fool
her. Part of her just hoped the vampire had looked different, like
anyone other than her mother, who Kira had already seen die far too
often in her dreams.

Aldrich didn’t even pause to give the woman,
his supposed wife, a second look. Instead, he managed to pull the
chandelier loose of its hold and Kira looked up just in time to see
it flying towards her face. Her hands rose instinctively as she
shut her eyes, but the hit never came.

Tristan, using Aldrich’s diverted attention
to its best use, had managed to free himself of the antlers just in
time to leap and catch the chandelier in midair. Using all of his
strength, he threw the iron fixture back at Aldrich. Like a bullet,
it sped blurrily through the air only to crash to the floor as
Aldrich focused his attention on his own life.

How much could he control before his powers
weakened? Kira asked herself, begging for some sign that they stood
a chance.

A loud bang sounded from behind the door as
something large slammed into it, breaking the hinges so Aldrich’s
power was the only thing keeping them secluded in the dining
room.

Something rammed into the door again,
pounding against it, almost splintering the wood. Aldrich looked
over, concentrating on the door, and Kira took the chance to
continue bombarding him with her fire—all of it Punisher and meant
to kill.

An antler rose from the floor, whipping
around and cutting into her arm, twirling Kira to the side so her
powers slid off of Aldrich. Healing the bruise quickly, Kira
continued breaking through the hold of his immunity. She was close.
She felt the ripple in the imaginary cover, the slight warping of
the glass case around his body. It was about to break apart into a
million pieces.

A spike broke off from the chandelier, an
iron pole aimed at her heart. Tristan jumped through her flames,
letting out a yell as the heat scorched his flesh, but he had saved
her.

“Tristan,” Kira called out, easing up on her
powers just a little bit.

“Don’t stop,” he screamed over the cackling
roar of her fire.

But Aldrich saw the moment of weakness and
sent more pieces flying toward her head. Tristan deftly jumped,
staying cautious of her fire but not completely clear of it, to
catch the items and keep Kira safe.

And she was almost there. Kira could feel
Aldrich’s protection thinning, like saran wrap about to reach its
breaking point. One more push and there would be a hole.

Aldrich looked up. He felt it too. His
features were slightly nervous.