Ignite (Midnight Fire Series Book One) (11 page)

Kira looked at Diana, at the smug look on her
face that already spoke of victory. If she was going to die anyway,
she might as well go out with a bang, Kira decided and thought of a
retort. "You, Diana? I think you’re a jealous bitch who can’t take
the fact that Tristan cares about a mere human more than he’s ever
cared about you. You’re the pathetic one," she said calmly.

Pain flashed across Diana’s face, but it
quickly turned to anger. Kira was confident that her words had hit
home, but maintained a neutral expression so she didn't give away
how much the little victory meant and how scared she truly was.

Diana grabbed Kira by the neck and picked her
up off the floor, so her feet rested an inch in the air. Kira
started choking from the lack of oxygen. "You are nothing," Diana
spat in Kira’s face, and then set her back down on her toes.

But, before Kira had settled on her feet
again, Diana’s hand whipped around and her nail cut open a long
line across Kira’s cheek. Diana slowly ran her finger along the cut
and pulled it back so Kira could see the blood on her finger. Diana
brought the blood close to her mouth, and when she sniffed it,
there was a flash of longing in her eyes. It repulsed Kira and she
looked away, a mistake that gave Diana an advantage to use.

"Do you think he’s different, Kira?" Diana
glanced at the blood on her finger. "Do you think he doesn’t thirst
for you like I do? That he’s kind and gentle? Well, he’s not."
Diana moved to the trapped Tristan, who had a look of dread on his
face. She walked closer and Tristan couldn’t gaze away from Kira’s
blood on her finger. He struggled to and tried to, and eventually
managed to look instead at the floor.

But Diana grabbed his face with one hand to
hold it steady, removed his gag and let her finger wander up to
rest on his lips. Kira watched as Tristan tried not to move his
mouth, tried not to taste her blood. Diana rubbed her finger clean
on his closed lips and waited, like she knew he wouldn’t be able to
resist.

Tristan shook from the exertion of trying not
to open his mouth, of trying to resist the innate urge to lick the
blood clean from his lips. Kira wanted to look away, but she needed
to see this, she needed to knock her feelings for Tristan right out
of her head.

Before long, Tristan looked at Kira with
feelings of pain and guilt and self-loathing, and slowly opened his
mouth to stick out his tongue and swallow. Kira saw the flash of
pleasure across his features, the slight glow in his eyes, and knew
the image would stay with her for a long time.

Diana clapped at her own ingenuity, like a
five year old playing with Barbie dolls, and walked back to Kira.
She slid her finger along Kira’s cheek and took her own taste. Kira
saw nothing but pleasure in her eyes, and that was how she still
knew Tristan was different. Not guilt free or perfect or even good,
but certainly not the same level of evil as the cold blue eyes of
Diana’s that showed no ounce of remorse.

Kira watched helpless as Diana moved close
again, and couldn’t look away as Diana held her gaze like Tristan
had in class. She felt the shiver of fear, thought of her family
that she would miss, but knew there was no way out. Soulless
glowing blue eyes looked into hers with excitement and Kira was
paralyzed and helpless to stop it. Diana didn’t move closer for the
kill, but instead remained still to enjoy watching Kira powerless.
A smile spread across her features, like she knew Kira didn’t know
enough to escape.

But then, in an almost comforting way, Kira
felt that surge of warmth like she had before in the classroom.
Instead of being scared at this unfamiliar feeling, Kira welcomed
it. Welcomed her own power coming through, the heat funneling to
her hands, and she knew she would be able to escape.

Kira tried to move free of the hold, but
still couldn’t. The heat from her hands soon became too much. In
Diana’s unfaltering stare, Kira knew she was still in danger, and,
for a second, she thought that maybe Tristan had let her escape in
the classroom, as though he had known what was happening inside of
her and knew how to stop it.

Diana had no such concern, and Kira started
to feel as though she were burning from the inside out, as though
her blood had turned to lava and was coursing through her body
destroying everything in its path.

Kira started shaking. Diana mistook it for
fear and started laughing. Kira couldn’t stop the vibration racking
though her body. The heat was excruciating. She began to scream,
and she barely registered Tristan’s pain as he struggled against
John and Jerome to try to save her.

She felt like a bomb, and as Diana finally
sank down to take her deathly bite, Kira finally exploded. All Kira
felt was the release of the heat going away and seeping out of her,
and when the pain was almost gone she opened her eyes and saw fire
streaming from her hands. Diana, John, Jerome and Tristan were
pressed against the back wall of the theater, held there by the
light coming from her hands, unable to escape. Kira didn’t know how
to turn it off. She didn’t know what was happening. Tristan's eyes
filled with pain and fear, and Kira realized she was hurting
him—destroying all of them and that they were afraid of her.

Kira couldn’t move and could barely breathe;
she just stared at her hands unable to control anything. She felt
different hands on her shoulders, shaking her and distantly heard
someone screaming her name but she felt like she was outside of
herself and was watching this scene as if it were a movie. She
almost wanted Diana to feel pain and to die; she almost wanted to
kill her.

The thought snapped Kira back to reality and
she realized it was Luke who was standing before her. He shook her
and called her name. Somehow she knew he could help. That he was
like her. Part of her was mad he never told her, but a much more
prominent part of her knew she needed his help, and was overjoyed
to see him.

"Kira, listen to me, you have to stop. You
have to release them." He spoke calmly, with a commanding
voice.

"How?" She cried, not knowing how to turn it
off. She was scaring herself.

"Just close your fists and let go of the
anger." He tried to sooth her and ran his hands up and down her
arms. She attempted to let go of the fear of knowing how close she
had come to death. She tried to let go of the anger at Diana for
wanting to kill her, and for torturing her and Tristan to do so.
Kira tried to let go of the anger at Tristan for giving in and
showing her that her trust in him might not have been worth it.

But most of all, she tried to let go at the
anger she felt with herself, for not knowing who she was, for not
being more demanding, for not being able to stop, for hurting
Tristan, and for feeling the urge to kill. And the fear, the fear
was the worst. How could she let go of the self-fear—the fear of
what she was and what she was capable of?

When Kira admitted all of this to herself,
she felt a slight release, and though it took all of her strength,
she slowly brought her fingers down to curl into her palm. Kira
brought her thumb around to hold the light and trap it within her
hands. Tendrils of fire tried to seep through the cracks in her
hand, but Kira held steady until finally the heat died and she was
able to just let it go.

She looked at the back wall where Diana, John
and Jerome jumped from the crevices they had been pressed into and
ran from the room. Tristan dropped slowly down and gave her one
more glance. In that instant, she realized he was right—they could
never be. He looked at her one last time, with sadness and fear,
and followed his friends out the door.

Kira knew he was different, she could see the
humanity in his eyes where it was absent from his friends, but it
wasn’t enough to make her chase after him. Instead, she looked at
Luke—at his familiar eyes, friendly demeanor, and look of
concern—and collapsed into his open arms as tears began to fall
from her eyes.

Kira stared out at the churning waves, barely
registering the body heat coming from Luke’s arm around her
shoulder. He had held her while she cried and after a long time of
sobbing, he had brought her to the Folly Beach pier to let the
rhythm of the water calm her. They hadn’t spoken more than five
words to each other since he carried her from the auditorium,
because Kira simply didn’t know what to say. How do you ask someone
if vampires are real and if what seemed like live fire just shot
from your hands? How do you admit to yourself that you clearly
aren’t human let alone ask someone else to believe it? Most of all,
how do you confess that you started falling for the one guy your
best friend told you not to and that everything he feared had come
true?

It wasn’t easy, Kira thought, to admit how
naïve you had been and to admit you were wrong about everything. It
wasn’t easy for her to think of Tristan, his eyes in pleasure at
the taste of her blood or his eyes in pain as her power slowly
started killing him. It was worse still to think of herself and
what she was. Kira couldn’t ignore it, but how in the world could
she face it?

How do you face it, she thought, and then
answered herself, you just do.

"Luke?" She turned to him. Luke didn’t move.
He just watched and waited to see what she would say. It was like
he knew her perfectly, knew what was coming but also knew that Kira
needed to hear herself say it before it could be true. "Luke…what
am I?"

"A girl," he replied, half-jokingly and
half-reassuringly. She nudged him with her shoulder.

"Seriously, no jokes," she said. He lifted
his eyebrows in response as if to say ‘who, me?’ but then realized
even his jokes wouldn’t adjust Kira’s frown. Kira could tell the
instant his mood changed from protector to informer. She could tell
from the furrow of his eyebrows that the jokes meant to cheer her
would be exchanged for serious talk she wasn’t used to from him.
Kira felt sadder when he lifted his arm from around her back and
turned toward her on the bench to see her face. He knew everything
and it was his duty to tell her.

"First, do you know what Tristan and the
others are?" She shook her head to say yes. "Tell me, Kira." She
breathed deeply, knowing the minute she said it out loud the scene
haunting her thoughts would come true. The supernatural strength
and speed. The blood and the teeth. It would all be real.

"Vampires," she whispered almost into the
wind, but Luke heard her.

"Good. Can you guess what we are?" She looked
at him, thankful he had told her what she had already guessed. They
were the same and she wasn’t alone. But still, Kira had no idea and
looked at him with blank eyes. "Kira, we’re something called
conduits, protectors if you will. We’re the only living things that
can hunt vampires, and I say living because we mostly believe that
vampires are dead, but they frequently kill each other." She
thought back to when Tristan had mentioned conduits; maybe he had
been trying to help her. It sounded crazy. She was some sort of
vampire slayer? But, it was the only explanation she had for what
just happened.

"So, we’re…conduits," Luke smiled when she
said the word, like he was happy she had accepted the name without
a fight. "To be a conduit of something, you have to like channel
something, right? That was the light I’m guessing, but I just don’t
understand." He took her hands and flipped her palms up, so she
could see the pale red burn marks they now held.

"We channel the sun, and I know it sounds
crazy, but that was the light you sent through your arms. It hurts
at first, but it’ll get better."

"The sun? That’s not possible." She thought
back to the feeling of lava running in her veins and the light that
looked almost like fire shooting from her hands. Could she even say
anything was impossible anymore? "But how? Why?" She asked.

"I’ll get to that later, first-"

"No, tell me now. It’s been long enough," she
yelled at him. "Why didn’t you tell me before? Why didn’t you warn
me? A little ‘stay away from Tristan or you’ll turn into a human
light bulb’, if I even am human. I thought you were my best friend.
I was so scared; I could have died not even knowing that I could
save myself. Damn it, Luke. Why didn’t you say anything?" She
started crying again, now out of frustration.

"You wouldn’t have died. Even though you
didn’t know in your head how to save yourself, your body knew
danger and reacted. Besides, I wasn’t allowed to, and before you
open your mouth again, listen to me for ten minutes." He reached
out to cover her open mouth with his finger. "You know how I said I
was from a small town in Florida, called Sonnyville?" Kira nodded.
"Well, it’s not just a small town. It’s a haven for conduits, so we
can grow up together and practice without normal people around and
without vampires to snatch us when we’re little."

"Why wasn’t I there?" Kira asked. Why hadn’t
she grown up knowing who she was?

"Because you’re different, and I was sent
here to watch and protect you."

"Sent here? Like forced to be my friend. Is
anything in my life real?" She ended quietly, asking more for
herself than for Luke.

"Yes, our friendship is real. I was supposed
to watch from afar. But, I’m getting ahead of the story. To explain
what we are, I have to go back to the beginning, to the stories you
were supposed to learn when you were just a kid." Kira nodded,
signaling she would keep quiet until he finished.

"Ever since humans have been around, vampires
have been too. Do you remember on the beach, how they were in the
sun?" Kira nodded. "The stories were wrong, just being in the sun
doesn’t really kill a vampire. They are stronger than anything else
in the world, and faster too. Their skin won’t break open unless at
the hands of another vampire, which is why there are so few ways to
kill them. They do live off of blood and only human blood will do.
But other than that, we don’t know very much because they are
incredibly hard to trap and study. All we really do know is that
the sunlight is lethal, just not from the distance with which it
shines."