Blaze (27 page)

“What’s going on?” His panic was clear. His
eyes were widening in shock. “Where are my men? The commander?” He
looked around the room again. “The last thing I remember is being
in the woods, the men were moaning all around me. A stranger walked
through the dead, sending blessings.” He pushed Kira’s dress aside,
groping for his leg. “My wound—it’s gone. I had been shot. I was
dying.”

His brown eyes met hers again. “Witch!” He
yelled at her, anger clouding his words. “What have you done to
me?” He reached for her throat and Kira was stuck, unsure of what
to do. His hands gripped tightly, cutting off her air. “Witch!”

Kira tried to speak, tried to calm him, but
it was no use against his strength. He pushed down on top of her,
pressing her into the ground as her vision started to spot. Kira
sucked for air but there was nothing.

And then whack.

Tristan rolled off of her, knocked out, and
Luke dropped the iron pole in his hand. “Man, I thought he was
annoying before, but that was ridiculous.”

“Luke,” Kira sighed, massaging her sore
neck. Things were happening too fast for her brain to process. “Is
Tristan…?”

“Human?” Luke supplied. Kira nodded.

“Looks like it,” Luke told her flatly. Kira
scanned his face, which was carefully molded into a smile, hiding
his real feelings. Kira was too spent to look past the façade and
read his thoughts. Her powers were too drained. But she didn’t need
to. Kira knew Luke better than she knew herself. She could hear the
pull to his words, the slight catch in his throat. His eyes were
uncertain—gone was the confident gaze he had focused on her after
their kiss yesterday.

Tristan was human and Luke’s eyes were
questioning her, silently asking her if that had changed
everything.

Kira looked back at her feet to the spot
where Tristan had collapsed. He looked vulnerable, like he needed
her. Kira brushed the hair from his forehead.

“I don’t think he remembers,” she said
softly, “any of it.”

“Yeah, when he called you a witch and tried
to kill you, I sort of got that impression.” Luke shrugged and
smirked at her. But this wasn’t a joke. Luke knew that, he just
couldn’t think of any other way to deal with it.

Kira turned away from him, looking at the
other conduits standing behind her. She had almost forgotten they
were there, silently observing everything.

“The prisoners?” Kira asked, focusing on
something tangible, something with a definite answer.

A man stepped forward, answering her.
“They’re safe. The female vampire, Pavia, ran too fast for us to
catch her, but we did what you asked and didn’t follow.”

“Aldrich?” Kira asked, looking back at Luke
who shook his head.

“Gone—vanished,” he said sadly, “when we got
inside, it was just you and Tristan. Somehow, he got away.”

Kira remembered how. She ran a tongue over
her canines, relieved to find them nearly as dull as they had ever
been. It was all her fault. Kira had hesitated. Part of her had
wanted him to suffer, had called for his blood. She had slipped,
had started to fall into the blackness gnawing at her heart.
Instead of fighting Aldrich, she had needed to fight herself,
giving him just enough time to run.

But Tristan had stayed. Why didn’t he just
leave, like they had planned? Why didn’t he save himself?

Kira knew that answer too. He loved her. And
when it came down to it, Tristan wasn’t strong enough to let her
go.

“Can we go home now?” Kira sighed, letting
Luke pull her to her feet. The dress was destroyed, hanging around
her body like a rag, filled with holes and shredded apart.

Tristan. Luke. Aldrich. Her own body. It was
too much for her to handle right now, too much for her to figure
out.

“Will you take him to the truck?” Luke asked
someone over Kira’s shoulder and two conduits walked forward,
lifting Tristan between them. “Put him with the other victims. Make
sure he gets a full medical check.”

They nodded and Kira silently watched them
maneuver through the wreckage, bringing Tristan’s body out the door
and into the night. The other conduits followed, leaving Kira alone
with Luke.

He looked down at her, waiting for
instructions.

“You didn’t by any chance bring some
clothes, did you?” Kira asked.

Luke raised his eyebrows, challenging her
doubt in him. “Please—I’ve got jeans, a t-shirt and my fuzzy worn
sweatshirt waiting in the car.”

“Thank God for you, Luke Bowrey,” Kira said,
taking his warm hand in hers, letting his strength funnel into her
arm, surging up and around her heart.

With Luke by her side, Kira knew she would
be able to face what was coming. His presence was like a drug,
giving her strength she never even knew she had.

She didn’t know what would happen in the
future. She didn’t know if Tristan would ever remember her. If he
would wake with recognition in his unfamiliar brown eyes or if,
like a child, he would be new to this world, struggling to make his
way in a new century. Kira would be there, helping him, but she had
been prepared for goodbye, ready for it even. And now even that
certainty was gone. A door of possibilities had opened, hanging in
the air like a question mark.

Kira didn’t know what would happen with
Aldrich. Where he had run or if he would come back. He didn’t know
how close he had come to succeeding, how close Kira had come to the
turn. Or maybe he did and maybe he would follow her to finish the
job.

And Kira didn’t even know what she was. Her
flames coiled in her heart, ready to break free at any moment, but
there was something else there too, a little cloud of darkness that
felt foreign in her body, something normally filled solely with
light. It was teasing her, testing her, daring her to take that
extra step away from the sun—demanding she fall, tumble down into
the black hole it created. And Kira was standing on the precipice,
looking down through the abyss, nervous that something or someone
would push her over the edge, sending her flying so fast that she
would change without even knowing it.

But Kira did know one thing, something so
certain and binding that it took her fear away. Luke would be there
to catch her, to save her from herself. He always was.

So Kira pushed her doubts to the back of her
mind, forgetting everything except for the warmth emanating from
Luke’s hand. For once, she didn’t want to think about the
consequences or about who she would hurt. She needed Luke and no
matter what happened, she wouldn’t let him go—not again.

Emboldened by the sudden thought, Kira
looked up into his green eyes, at the flames dancing around the
edges of his irises. He was already watching her, wondering what
was going on inside of her head.

And before she could stop to think, could
stop to worry about Tristan, Kira did exactly what she wanted in
that instant: she leaned up and kissed him, quickly planting her
lips against his.

In a heartbeat it was over and Kira was
walking past him, out the door in search of a change of clothes, a
way home and a meal to calm the hunger knotting in her stomach.

Luke was stuck. His feet were planted
against the ground in shock. His lips tugged into a wide smile and
his eyes started sparkling.

Kira didn’t need to turn around. She knew
exactly what Luke looked like, because her face held the same
expression—pure hope and happiness.

And like the last time they had kissed, her
blood turned into golden honey, spreading warmth and tenderness
around her body like a soft caress.

So for a moment, Kira forgot everything and
let herself feel happy, truly and perfectly happy.

###

Keep reading for a free preview
of
Scorch
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(Cover Art: Manipulated by Kaitlyn
Davis from attribution licensed flickr creative commons photos
by:
Jason Hargrove
and
Swami Stream
.)

From a chair in the corner of his hospital
room, Kira looked at the steady rise and fall of Tristan's chest.
His movements were in tune to the constant beep of the machines
wired to his body. They were the only things telling her that he
was alive, because every other part of him was still. His mouth was
relaxed, slightly open to let each exhale escape. His eyelids were
closed, his brows were flat and the stress-induced wrinkles
normally bunching his forehead were gone. He looked oddly at peace,
floating between the realm of the living and the dead.

But it was time for him to wake up.

Two days had passed since the fight in
Aldrich's castle: one long day of travel from England to Sonnyville
and one long day explaining everything to the Protector
Council.

Kira couldn't erase the pain in her
grandfather's eyes as she told him that his only daughter, her
mother, was truly gone—that a vampire had stolen her memories,
replicated her face, and pretended to be her just to fool Kira.

She couldn't forget the wounded look on
Luke's face as she explained Tristan's miraculous transformation to
the other conduits. His kiss still burned in her mind, playing on
repeat, making her feel alive. Her love for Luke had been simmering
in the back of her thoughts all this time, and it had finally
broken to the surface, blossoming to a strong flame before she
really even realized it was there. But looking at a human Tristan,
now so fragile and new to the world, Kira wasn't sure she could let
him go and make him face it alone.

But most of all, Kira couldn't loosen the
knot in her chest, knowing she let Aldrich free—knowing that
somewhere out there he was alive and knew her secret. That was the
worst part of it all, the darkness hiding inside of her that she
couldn't share with anyone, not even Luke. A wedge of evil had
lodged itself in her heart, a little black hole had nestled within
her flames, and it wasn't going away.

She knew it.

Aldrich knew it.

And Kira didn't see Aldrich forgetting about
that any time soon.

Which was why she had holed up in Tristan's
hospital room, waiting with only her thoughts for company. After
learning that she had been dating a vampire, the other conduits in
Sonnyville started avoiding her. Her grandparents wanted to
reconnect with her, but Kira couldn't stand the waves of
disappointment churning in their eyes—after giving them new hope,
she had failed to bring her birth mother home. Her adoptive parents
had been furious when they heard about her trip to England and Kira
had hung up the phone to escape a lecture. And Luke, Kira's best
friend in the entire world, was getting impatient. He wanted her
decision and she wasn't ready to give it.

So, take away all of those people and who
was left? Her comatose, once vampire now human, ex-boyfriend who
thought he was living in the 1800s. Oh, and who almost choked her
to death when he woke up because he thought she was a demon
witch.

Perfect.

Kira sighed, rolled her eyes and knocked her
head back against the wall. She really was in a corner—physically
and mentally stuck. And she needed Tristan to wake up right now,
before she actually went insane. She needed a distraction, and
telling someone about the one hundred and fifty years of human life
they had missed, well, that ought to take some time.

Antsy, Kira stood and walked to the foot of
Tristan's bed just in time to catch his foot twitch. The conduit
doctors had been keeping him heavily medicated for the past day in
order to study his cell composition, but the twenty-four hours Kira
had granted them was over and Tristan wasn't going to be a lab rat
any longer.

Farther up in the bed, his fingers bent into
a fist and then flexed straight in a stretch.

Kira moved closer, stepping next to his face
so she could put a hand to his warm cheek. His skin had a healthy
flush and a slight tan, which, though natural for a human, seemed
unnatural on him. The tips of her fingers brushed his silky black
hair and Kira studied the slightly curled strands for a moment
before focusing on his eyes.

They blinked once and closed again, but
Kira's heart stopped.

Brown.

She wasn't used to those chocolaty irises
yet. And when he blinked again, Kira forced her breath to
steady.

"Shh," she cooed while stroking his cheek.
The glaze over his eyes began to recede, replaced by confusion and
fear, both somewhat muted from his medication.

"Where…?" He began in a scratchy voice, but
stopped mid-sentence when his gaze caught the fluorescent light
blinking overhead. "What…?" His head tilted and an odd expression
gathered on his face as he surveyed the room.

Oh right, Kira thought, electricity. It was
easy to forget how long ago 1864 really was.

"Please try not to panic," Kira said. After
thinking about this moment for the entire plane ride home from
England, she had decided to leave their relationship out—to pretend
they were never more than friends. It would be easier that way… for
her at least. "I'm Kira," she said, "do you remember your
name?"

"Tristan, Tristan Kent," he said with a deep
swallow and locked his gaze on her, sending a little swarm of
butterflies into her stomach.

"Nice to meet you, Tristan." Kira leaned
back, letting go of his cheek to shake his hand.

"And you, miss…" He trailed off, waiting for
her last name.

"You can just call me Kira," she said. He
had to be introduced to the twenty-first century at some
point—might as well start now.

"Miss Kira," he breathed, letting the words
roll off of his tongue while he reached for her outstretched hand.
Unexpectedly, he brought her fingers to his mouth for a quick
kiss.