Blaze (26 page)

Kira smiled.

And then the table lifted off the ground,
smashing Tristan, pinning him, squishing him against the wall.

Kira ran to help, but candles bombarded her,
pelting her skin like baseballs, leaving welts she could barely
heal fast enough to stay on her feet. She pulled her flames back,
forcing them underneath her skin to protect her body from Aldrich’s
merciless pursuit.

She yanked on the table leg, trying to free
Tristan but it wouldn’t budge.

A set of antlers flew at her face, and Kira
jumped to the ground, but not soon enough. One branch pierced her
calf, breaking through flesh and lodging itself against her bone.
Kira cried out and tried to yank the antler free, but it was like
iron clamped to her leg. Holding back tears, Kira let out a
scream—of pain and frustration.

From the other side of the door, Luke’s
muffled voice called out. His warmth surged through her, but it
wasn’t enough to keep the pain at bay.

The pounding on the entry began anew, and
for one split second, when the door burst fully open exposing the
conduits behind it, Kira met Luke’s warm honey green eyes. And that
was enough to keep her pushing on.

Aldrich forced the door closed again and the
wood protested, splintering along its joints. With Aldrich turned
away from Tristan, the table fell back to the ground. The second he
was free, Tristan disappeared, running quickly across the room to
latch Aldrich’s arms behind his back. With one twist, he snapped
his neck, knocking Aldrich out, and all the floating objects in the
room dropped to the ground.

“Now Kira!” Tristan yelled, looking
pointedly at Aldrich. Kira shook her head.

“Step back!”

“I can’t. He’ll wake up at any moment.”
Tristan looked at her sadly, almost as if he had accepted this as
the end. “Do it.”

Closing her eyes, Kira let her fire free and
felt her flames engulf Aldrich, licking Tristan’s skin as well.

She knew exactly when Aldrich woke up. She
felt his neck snap back into place, felt his power immediately
surge to keep the other conduits out, but they were already inside.
The table flew across the room again, barreling into all of them,
slamming into the entry like a substitute door, but this wouldn’t
last nearly as long.

And Aldrich knew that. Because he knew his
time was almost up.

Just like that, the immunity shattered
around him and Kira’s flames were sinking into his flesh, burning
his skin and melting the black oil that slithered through his
veins. She hated this man and finally he would die.

Kira crept closer, forgetting about
Tristan’s proximity, forgetting about everything except Aldrich and
everything he had taken away from her. A father. A mother. Her
childhood. Her future. Everything.

And Kira realized she wanted more than death
for him. For someone truly evil, death was not enough. She let her
flames sear his skin enough to hurt, enough to cause him pain,
enough to prolong the process. And part of her enjoyed hearing his
screams. Part of her wanted him to beg for his life.

With those thoughts, a little black sliver
of tar Kira hadn’t managed to dislodge from her heart roared to
life. She knew what she wanted—his blood.

Kira wanted to suck the life from his veins,
to feed for the first time.

But no, she fought against it, letting her
fire surge forward again. That was the last thing she needed. The
last thing she wanted.

Or was it? The blood would be warm, it would
boil through her heart, adding to her power, making her strong
enough to kill him and make it hurt.

But it did hurt, Kira thought as she
listened to screams sounding in her ear.

But did it hurt enough? An ugly voice
rearing to life inside her mind questioned.

Kira licked her lips, lowering her hands
just a smidge. Her tongue traveled over her teeth. They drew blood.
Her own blood—warm and tasting like fresh embers.

No.

No. No. No.

Kira’s real voice screamed in her head,
pushing the blackness back once more as she fell to the ground
clutching her scalp in her hands. What was happening to her?

Kira focused her flames inwards, letting
them burn her blood, letting the fire scorch her back to life, back
to sanity. She healed her cuts, scrapes and wounds, blaming blood
loss for her mental break. But the little black patch over her
heart wouldn’t go away. It retreated, creeping back into the little
crevice it had hidden in before, but Kira felt it staining her
soul, waiting for the opportune moment to sneak up on her
again.

“Kira!”

Someone was screaming into her brain.
Someone was shaking her. Hands gripped her arms, but the pain was
welcome and it brought Kira out of herself.

Her vision came back, spotty at first, until
a blonde head broke through the blur.

“Luke,” she said lazily with a smile, as
though she were waking up from a dream. But his face was filled
with horror as he glanced at Kira, over her shoulder, and back to
her.

Kira tried to sit up, but her vision fell
away again, forcing her back to the floor.

“Luke. What’s wrong?” Kira asked, watching
his mouth open into a gape and his eyes widen, shocked. But he
wouldn’t speak. His eyes kept traveling back and forth, until Kira
could no longer endure it.

She leaned her head back, peering over her
shoulder, expecting to see the pile of ash that should be Aldrich’s
dead body.

Instead, there was something inhuman, a
mound of charred flesh, burned black and flaky but not yet dead.
Limbs curled in on themselves and Kira sat up, ready to finish the
job.

“It’s okay,” Kira told Luke, “He won’t be
able to heal himself anyway.” She brought a flame to her hand,
looking at the steaming body behind her. Even vampires didn’t
deserve to die that way.

But before she could move her flames even a
centimeter closer, Luke yanked on her arm, jerking her flames to
the side.

“Kira!” He gasped. She looked at him
confused. Suddenly wondering where Tristan was. Had he already left
without saying goodbye? Did he already disappear from her life and
walk away like he said he would? Was he just gone?

But, Kira sat up, he wouldn’t just leave
without knowing she was safe. Not after all of this. So Kira looked
around the room, at the nervous and scared faces of the conduits
around her. Why were they all looking at her so strangely?

She lifted her hands to her mouth, feeling
for fangs. Were her canines slightly longer and sharper than
before? They felt almost normal…almost.

“Luke, what’s going on? Where’s Tristan?”
Her voice rose an octave as nerves took over.

“Kira,” he said hesitantly—gently—placing a
hand on her arm, “that is Tristan.”

Kira followed his eyes disbelieving back to
the pile of burning flesh behind her, still looking for Tristan
beneath the broken remnants of the room. Wax had melted all along
the floor and the wooden table was a pile of simmering embers,
barely tall enough to hide a mouse. The flower petals had already
turned to dust.

With nothing else to look at, Kira stared
back at the burnt vampire curled in on itself against the
floor.

A fist closed around her heart, squeezing
her chest tightly, painfully.

She couldn’t breath.

He couldn’t mean…

She would never…

And then, slowly, one charred eyelid slid
open, revealing a midnight blue twinkling eye that Kira would
recognize anywhere.

She screamed.

Chapter Sixteen

“Tristan!” Kira shrieked again. She pulled
on her hair, begging for the pain to wake her up from this horrible
nightmare. This couldn’t be happening. Kira wouldn’t accept it.

She had killed Tristan. He was dying,
burning, because of her fire.

“Kira,” Luke gripped her shoulder, trying to
comfort her. Kira shirked his hold.

“What have I done?” She asked herself, Luke,
no one. “What have I done?” Kira whimpered.

“Kira, you have to end it,” Luke said
softly. Kira looked away from the mass of flesh Tristan had turned
into. She couldn’t bear to look at his blackened, scarred, burnt
skin any longer.

“What?” Kira asked Luke, scanning his face
for some other meaning in his words.

“Tristan—he’s in pain. You have to end it,”
Luke said. His eyes were concerned, warm, trying to give her
strength but also lost.

“I have to save him,” Kira said, shaking her
head at Luke’s words. “I have to help him.”

“You can’t,” Luke urged.

“I have to,” Kira whispered and turned away
from Luke. She crawled over the floor until her skin was close
enough to feel the heat emanating from Tristan’s body.

In some places his skin looked like melted
rubber, bright red and stretched, bubbling with blisters. In other
places, it was dark and charred, flaking into ash, already
disintegrating. His knees curled into his torso like a child’s, his
arms were glued to his side, melted against the abs Kira had loved
to touch. His fingers, his beautiful artistic fingers that Kira had
previously seen blacked with charcoal, were now blackened by her
fire. They had blown up to twice their size, swelling with blood
that was just about to break free of his skin.

Biting her lip to keep from screaming, Kira
finally looked up at his face. Wet tears fell down her cheeks,
landing on his skin and instantly fizzling dry.

Aside from the one eye still looking at her,
pleading with her, his face was unrecognizable. Gone was the black
hair she always ran her fingers through, the long strands that fell
over his forehead when he was really concentrating. His scalp was
bald, an ugly harsh red mixed with black, like a cooling lava
field. His ears were melted flat. His soft lips that Kira could
kiss for hours were gone.

Kira looked into his open eye again.

Luke was right.

Tristan was in pain. He was begging for
release, and Kira couldn’t do anything to save him. She could only
end it, end the hurt.

Kira took a deep, unsteady breath and
brought a small flame to her palm. She put her hand over the center
of his chest, knowing it would be the fastest way to end it.

Slowly, while his body jerked in pain, Kira
sunk the flame into his heart, expecting it to already be black and
broken.

But, unlike his skin, his heart was whole
and healthy. It was red, pumping, full-of-life. It looked almost
human, except for a shell of hard, black metal around it, sealing
it off, protecting it.

Kira burned the shield, melting the black
away.

And suddenly an idea came to her. What if
she could push the darkness from his flesh? What if she could save
him? Kira had protected herself, had managed to push the vampire
out of her.

Kira changed her flames, letting her
Protector fire flow freely around Tristan’s heart. She could almost
feel his soul hiding within its walls, something white and pure,
silvery and straining to be free. It hadn’t been burned. Only his
body, and Kira knew she could fix that.

She encased his heart in her fire,
protecting it from the dark shell it had been trapped in for more
than one hundred and fifty years. And then she continued to burn
Tristan, focusing on the darkness woven through his body. Slowly,
methodologically, Kira pushed her powers on, revealing pink flesh
as the sticky, evil tar inside of him was melted away.

The further she moved, the more Kira
expanded her protection, healing his wounds, healing the burns she
had raised on his skin.

She kept her eyes sealed shut, too afraid
that all of this was only in her mind, too afraid that in reality
she would wake to a pile of ash and not a human, not Tristan. Could
she be imagining her powers? Could she have gone crazy enough to
live a dream?

Her flames slid up to his face, into his
brain, restoring old nerves that had grown weak. Until finally, it
was only the flesh of his face that needed to be healed, and she
did so patiently, envisioning the curve of his nose, his striking
hooded eyes, his soft almost pouted lips, the dimple that buried
above his mouth when he smiled.

Kira brought her hands to his cheeks. Was
the soft flesh she felt real? Could Tristan possibly be alive?

After a second, Kira felt warmth under her
hands, felt blood pump through the cheeks below her fingers. A gasp
filled her ears, the sound of a drowning man finally brought back
to life.

Kira opened her eyes.

Tristan. Her Tristan.

He was alive. His pink lips were open and
breath surged in and out of them. Kira pulled her powers back under
her skin and roamed with her eyes instead.

His skin was tanned, not the pale white she
was used to. His hair had returned, thick and falling over his
forehead. His lashes were full, but closed, covering the eyes Kira
was longing to look into. Mostly, his body was warm, brimming with
life in a way Kira had never witnessed before. He felt human.

Tristan stirred. His limbs shifted, his arms
stretched over his head as though he was waking from a long
slumber. Finally, he blinked. His lids flickered open, quickly at
first and then slower to reveal warm, milk chocolate brown
irises.

He blinked again and Kira could see that his
vision was fuzzy, blurred and unclear. One more time and there was
more focus, but no recognition. His eyes locked on hers,
confused.

“Who are you?” His hoarse voice scratched
out. The deep rumble sent a shiver down Kira’s body. It really was
Tristan. But then, his words registered.

“Kira,” she said, as though the answer was
so obvious she couldn’t believe he was asking it.

“Where am I?” He asked with aggression
leaking into his tone. Kira didn’t know what to say.

Tristan sat up, looking down at his body
that was naked except for Kira’s dress which had fallen over him
during the healing. He looked at the ground, at the destruction all
around him.