"Did you talk to him about it?" Kira asked. Their society was so different from everything she had grown up with. She couldn’t imagine the pressure of feeling like a warrior and never being able to make mistakes. Kira looked at her mother’s red curls as they blew in the breeze and wondered if she viewed them as a curse.
"I tried. I’ll never forget what he told me. I had been in the kitchen washing the dinner plates when I noticed him sitting outside on the back steps, so I paused and went out to comfort him. I told him that everyone makes mistakes and everyone misses every so often, but I could tell they were just empty words. He was looking up at the stars with the deepest confusion in his eyes, and then he turned to me and asked, ‘Ellie? Have you ever wondered if we were wrong?’ and for a moment I didn’t understand. But when he turned to look back at the night sky, I realized he meant us, the Punishers. Were we wrong in killing? Did vampires really have souls? ‘Of course not,’ I told him full of confidence. We were never even allowed to question those beliefs, rooted in our ancestral history for thousands of years. I saw him shut himself away when I answered. He stood up and went inside to finish the dishes, and I was the one left to ponder why he would ever ask me that."
"What would you reply now?" Kira asked her mother, realizing they almost mirrored the scene from her memories, sitting on the porch, but staring at the sun rather than the stars.
"I’ve never seen a vampire who didn't appear evil to the core, but I suppose there are always exceptions to the rules." Her mother paused, and Kira thought that maybe she was wishing she had used that response with her brother, to provide some sort of solace.
For a moment, Kira allowed herself to think of Tristan. Could he be that exception? But she shook her head and tried to focus on her real father and his story. "It was my birth mother, wasn’t it? A Protector changing his mind?"
Her mother nodded. "I didn’t realize it for a long time, but in the year that followed, he went on more solo missions and came back with rebellious ideas of capturing vampires and running tests on them rather than killing them. He wanted to research the old texts to see if anyone had ever found a vampire with his soul intact. He never found anything, but the elders were still so angry with him. He was their golden boy and within a year he became dirt. I noticed he received secret letters and made whispered phone calls when he thought our family was asleep. I confronted him, but he never answered straightly. I never dreamed he was secretly dating a Protector. Of all the rules in our society, that is the most unbreakable and the most forbidden. For two years this continued, but soon after his twenty-third birthday, he received news that scared him enough to finally come clean to me. I was twenty-one at the time and had been living away from home for a while. I had already met your adoptive father and we were so in love. Of course, I traveled home to visit, but the conduit life already seemed so far off to me.
"But one day, I opened the door of my apartment to your father’s very conflicted face. I read joy, but also the deepest sorrow, and I knew something was incredibly wrong. ‘Ellie,’ I remember him choking out to me before breaking down into sobs. I brought him inside, and there he confessed to me that he had fallen in love with the most beautiful woman in the world, one who had the purest blonde hair imaginable. At first, I was horrified. I wasn’t sure whether to comfort or to scold him, but I knew I was all he had. He told me how they first met while she had been living in New York trying to protect its citizens from the ever-increasing local vampire population. That had been the site of his first solo mission, and they had been tracking the same clan when they ran into each other. At first, they hated each other but then they realized they needed to help each other in order to hunt down and weaken the clan. They started debating philosophies until each was unsure of the lessons they’d been taught since birth. And when they hunted down the clan, your father killed and your mother weakened, but neither felt the same joy as before. He said from that first meeting, they never stopped talking. At first, it had been secret run-ins in New York, then letters, then phone calls, until finally they had stopped taking on real missions and just escaped to meet each other in private. He said they had secretly gotten married a month ago, and he pulled a ring from a chain around his neck. And finally, he showed me a letter your mother had just written, confessing she was pregnant with a child."
"And it was the worst news imaginable?" Kira guessed and sipped on her hot cocoa for solace. She sank further into her seat and grabbed a preemptive tissue to wipe at the tears that would soon be falling.
"No, your father was the happiest I had ever seen him, but it was difficult. They knew there would be no turning back. A child meant a life on the run, because you had to be kept secret. He confessed to me that they had made a plan to meet up where they had first met and then run away, and keep running if that was what would be needed to keep you safe. He was going to completely turn his back on his people, all for you, the unborn child he already cherished above everything else."
"But the plan backfired?" Kira asked and her mother nodded. "This seems to be a story where everything that could have gone wrong, did go wrong."
"In many ways, it was. Your father and mother did run away together, and you were born eight months after your father had come to see me. I was the only one he told, and I begged him to come see me, to let me see you. He told me they had found a safe place and he couldn’t give it away, but that they would chance it and come to me. I was overjoyed. For one secret weekend, your father came to visit me, and I met your mother and you. You were the cutest baby ever, only two months old and already with a full set of curly blonde and red hair. You always had a smile on your face, and to the outside viewer all three of you would have looked like the perfect family. In the short hours I spent with your mother, I learned she was caring and gentle. She was an amazing woman, and I easily understood how the two of them had come to love each other. When they left, I assumed it would be years before I could meet you again, but in reality it was only a few short days."
"What happened?" Kira asked, knowing the heartbreaking story of her true parents was about to come to an end. Her mom was just about twenty-three in the story, and Kira knew that was the age she had always been told she was born.
"On their way back home, they were discovered by Punishers from a different state. They were captured and questioned, and you were almost put to death until your mother’s people came to argue for your life. In the middle of the night, your father tried to escape. He found your mother and you, but while running away, you three were jumped by vampires. Your father was killed, as was your mother, but the vampires had all shared a little of the blood so none was completely immune to our powers. We got there just in time to save you and hold them at bay by mere feet. We rescued you and saved your father’s body, but your mother’s was still on the other side of the barrier that our powers had created. When we went back the next day, it was gone."
"And I was given to you, my closest relative, so I could live outside of that world and maybe have a chance at a normal life. The Protectors agreed to guard me, and you and Father adopted me to save me."
"And also to love you, as I always have. I used to pray at night that you hadn’t been gifted with any powers, but as you grew, I knew that wasn’t true. You had eyes of fire and hair to match and my prayers turned to hoping you would never find out what you were."
"But, I did."
"You did," her mother agreed sadly. She had barely looked at Kira while they spoke, too afraid to see judgment from her daughter’s eyes. The change saddened Kira, as the slight awkwardness in the air spoke of their forever altered relationship.
"What were their names?" Kira asked, wanting a small thing to remember her parents by. Names were simple, but held so much meaning.
"Andrew and Lana."
Kira took another tissue to wipe at her face. The story of her parents was sadder than she ever imagined. She had hoped they weren’t dead, maybe just locked away somewhere. In a way, it seemed like they had only ju
st died because she had only just found them. Kira watched the fading sun sink beneath the tree line and watched the ruby wisps of cloud start to fade. Her mother and she had been outside for a long time. Kira appreciated the stories. She had needed the stories. But it wasn’t enough to make her forget everything else.
"I have to ask why you never told me? Even knowing I was adopted without knowing all the details? I could have handled this new world of the conduits so much easier if every other facet of my life wasn’t shattering along with it."
Kira’s mother eased from her seated position and walked the three short steps required to stand before her daughter. She knelt, cupping Kira’s hands in her own, trying to close the distance that had sprouted between them.
"I just didn't know how. I wanted to. Your father and I discussed it every year. First we excused it because you were too young, then because you were going through puberty and we knew that was a fragile time for building an identity. Then your sister came around, and we didn't want you to resent her, and then you were in New York and so far away."
"And then I came home as an adult." Kira pulled her hands away and returned them to the empty mug on the side table.
Her mother let her hands drop to the floor, as a tear slid from her cheek. "You’re still my baby. I didn't know how to tell you without breaking the family apart."
"I understand, in a lot of ways I really do, but I’m just not ready to let it go. I need some time to adjust, so can we put the pause button on this conversation? I need a break and time to think." Kira resituated herself in the chair so that her body leaned away from her mother’s. She needed to be alone, needed to ruminate in peace.
Her mother understood and stepped backward, giving Kira space. "Of course, I just want to give you one thing." She drew a small envelope from her pocket and put it onto the table next to the now empty mugs of hot chocolate. "It's a token I’ve had locked away for a while. Remember I told you that my brother came to visit with you? Well, we took a single photograph, and I put it in a locket that I always meant to give to you when I told you the truth. Let me know if you need me, but I’ll leave you alone for a while."
When her mother had disappeared inside the house, Kira lifted the packet and heard the jingle of a chain scratching against paper. She tipped the envelope and let the necklace slide out. The locket was a silver oval, completely plain with no engravings, and next to it on the chain was a gold ring the size of a man’s finger. She looked at the inside arch of the band and read the cursive words etched there. "Love will prevail, your Lana". His wedding ring, she realized. No, not his, Kira thought. Her dad Andrew's wedding ring—the one that tied him to his true love, her mother, Lana. Kira clutched the ring to her chest, letting tears fall freely, and used her other hand to open the locket, which had fallen to the other end of the chain.
Her father and mother held her between them. Three smiles and three pairs of green speckled eyes looked out from the photograph. Kira couldn't believe she had no memories left from those few months she had had alone with her parents. Her father’s hair was a mop of red curls, and freckles spanned his cheeks. His smile was wide and open, just like hers in that it was hard to tell if she was laughing or just smiling. Her mother’s hair looked like the sun. It was so perfectly blonde and straight like Luke’s. Her smile was more reserved, but her eyes were the same large shape as Kira’s, just slightly too big for her face. Kira wondered if her own had ever looked so full of joy and secrets. And there Kira was, a tiny little baby sandwiched between them, laughing and looking up at her mother.
Kira stared at the photo. It was minute in size but more important to her than anything else she had ever owned. She moved over to the hammock and lay down, staring at the open-faced locket while time passed by unnoticed. This was the only connection she would ever have to them, and she wanted to memorize every detail she could. Kira wished she could recover just one memory, but her mind from those early weeks of life was too far gone.
A car rolling on gravel distracted Kira, and she heard Chloe giggle and her father’s deep laugh. They were home. Both were removed from the conduit world, and for a moment, Kira wondered what he thought the story was. How did he imagine her parents had died? A car crash? A murderer? No one but her mother had the real truth, the full story, except maybe her grandparents. Strangers to her, who she now knew must exist somewhere in the world, but had never wanted anything to do with her.
The screen door opened.
"Honey?" the baritone voice of her father asked. "I spoke with your mother. I just wanted to see how you were. If there was anything I could do?" Kira shook her head. "I love you, and I always have."
"I know," Kira replied, still turned away. She heard him sigh as he went back inside. Kira was sure her mother had told him not to push her and to let her be.
She curled further up like a baby, closing the locket and gripping it to her chest, as close to her heart as possible. The stars were starting to appear in the ever-darkening sky, and Kira let her tears pool. Kira cried for the life she was robbed of as a child, the one she had just been robbed of again. She cried for her dead parents and for her living substitutes now guilt-ridden over their lie. Mostly she thought about what could have been and what would be. About training with Luke and what training with her parents might have been like. She wondered if her parents would have told her the histories of the conduits like bedtime stories to gradually fall asleep to.
Somewhere in all the sorrow, Kira fell asleep and let her dreams do the imagining for her. She hardly noticed when her real life father picked her up from outside and carried her inside to bed.
Chapter Nine
A ringing phone woke Kira the next morning. Her eyes were swollen, and she was dehydrated and dizzy from the days before. When she turned over in bed, a cool chain rolled across her skin. She pulled the locket back over her heart, cupping it in her hand. At least it's something, Kira mused. She had photographs and stories, some little tokens to remember them by. Love will prevail, she thought. It was comforting to know her parents had loved each other enough to risk it all to be together. She hoped she could do the same if the time ever came.
The incessant ringing sounded in her ear again, and Kira reached under her pillow to grab her cell phone. She looked at the caller ID—Luke. Was she ready to get out of bed and face the world? No. But, Kira realized, she would probably never feel ready to start moving on to her new life in a new world she had yet to figure out. She flipped open her cell.
"Hello?" Kira’s voice came out scratchy and hardly loud enough for her own ears to hear.
"You sound like crap."
"Thanks." She rolled her eyes at Luke, wishing he could see her reaction, some sign she was at least alive enough to make fun of him again.
"Get out of bed, get dressed, and be downstairs in ten minutes. The gang and I are on the way."
"Good lord. Couldn’t you have given me some warning?" Kira asked, jumping out of bed and running to her closet. Ten minutes was not nearly enough time for her to start looking like a human being again. She needed to shower, and she needed some caffeine.
"Ah, sorry. I totally forgot you’re a girl. Emma said I should have called you earlier."
"Tell her I said thanks. See you soon."
Kira hung up and used both hands to search her closet for jeans and a super comfortable, oversized sweater to wear. She might be venturing outdoors, but she still wanted to feel as though she was lounging in her pjs.
Five minutes later, Kira heard a beep outside and cursed Luke for of course being early. She peered out of her window while quickly buttoning her jeans and saw Emma kick Dave out of the front seat of her small convertible. He sheepishly jumped into the back with the boys, and Kira decided to hurry up before he tried to steel shotgun again.
"Hey!" Emma waved from the driver’s seat as Kira walked outside. Kira smiled back.
"So, what’s the mystery event today? Luke didn’t give me any information over the phone."
"Well, it was my idea," Emma began while fiddling with the radio and shushing the boys’ complaints when Taylor Swift came on.
"Shopping?" Kira guessed from the glimmer in the other girl’s eyes.
"Costume shopping!" Emma seemed positively giddy as she pulled away from the curb and eased onto the empty street. She stepped on the gas, and the car sped down the road. Kira liked feeling the wind in her hair and the roar of the other cars when they turned onto a busier street. It drowned out her thoughts, and part of her felt like a normal girl about to spend a crazy afternoon with her friends.
"Halloween is in two weeks, and we have nothing to wear! It’s a travesty!" Emma infused feigned sadness into her voice—well, at least Kira thought it was feigned. "We need to get costumes now before all of the good ones are taken. And I figured we could all plan some sort of theme together."
"Not this again." In the back seat, Miles scrunched up his face, making his glasses slant sideways.
"Oh please, it’ll be fun!" Excited, Emma released both hands from the wheel to make her point. Kira jumped forward and grabbed it before the car could swerve out of control. Emma flashed her a sheepish smile.
"I’m with Miles. I refuse to dress up as a Ken doll," Dave added, almost under his breath, but loud enough for Emma to notice.
"It was only an idea…" Emma let her sentence trail off. Kira laughed picturing the boys as Disco Ken with sequined blazers on.
"I’ve got it!" Luke chimed in from the back seat. Everyone but Emma, now making the effort to concentrate on driving, turned to look at him. "Power Rangers."
Kira groaned. "I refuse to wear a yellow jumpsuit. Never happening. No way."
"You could wear the pink one…" Luke trailed off, anticipating a slap. Instead, Kira turned around in her seat and simply rolled her eyes at him. He laughed it off but held her eyes for an extra second. She nodded subtly, trying to let him know this was exactly what she had needed and that she was finally feeling a little better. The bickering that constantly seemed to befall their little gang was making her forget all about the other thoughts churning in her head.
The Complete Midnight Fire Series Page 11
