She could smell the salt on his cheeks. She saw the wet lines that glistened in the sunlight.
Luke, the name came unbidden to her mind. She rolled the L around her tongue, toying with the sound before agreeing that it seemed right.
“Luke?” she asked.
“Kira,” he said sadly and started walking across the clearing.
Kira stood up, food forgotten, and walked toward him.
They stopped two feet apart, and Kira couldn’t help but feel sorry for the boy in front of her. He seemed so depressed. His eyes were curved downward, as were the corners of his lips.
“So you made your choice,” he spoke softly but Kira heard every word.
“Choice?” she asked, wrinkling her nose in confusion. What choice had she made?
“You know, I was worried about you turning into a smurf on me, blue eyes and everything.” He laughed quietly, almost like a sigh. “I didn’t think I had to worry about this.”
“About what?” Kira said. This boy, Luke, was very strange. He spoke in riddles.
“I wish I could help you,” he said next, but Kira had given up on understanding him. “I wish I could.” He reached his hand over her heart. “But she’s not in there. My best friend is gone and this is the only thing I can do to save her.”
And Kira was on fire. His hand scorched her skin, burning her to the core, melting her heart. She stumbled back on unsteady feet. What was happening?
Flames burst from his palm, following her as she fumbled backward, trying to escape. A shout reached her senses and Kira turned around blindly, just in time to see Tristan drenched in flames, circled by four men with red hair. He was trapped. Kira could see his skin melt. There was nothing she could do to save him. But she tried. She ran to him, and another set of flames slammed into her from the side, sending her flying in the wrong direction.
When she looked up from the grassy patch that she had landed in, everyone was gone and she was alone in the clearing.
“Tristan!” Kira shrieked, but there was no answer. “Tristan!” she yelled again.
“He’s dead,” came the reply from behind her.
Kira stood and faced that sound. But it was a girl. A girl with curly red hair. No, curly blonde hair. No, both.
Her eyes were blue, bright light shards of cobalt with orange burns along the edges. They seemed to glow as they sunk into her skull, blinding Kira with their brightness. They seemed to burn, almost alive like fire.
But no, her hands were burning. Flames gathered on each palm, engulfing the entirety of her arms.
Kira turned to run, but before she could take a step, fire blasted into her back and she was thrown face first to the ground. She scrambled to stand, but the fire was unceasing. It sank into her skin, latching onto her bones. It coursed through her veins, bursting blood cells apart, traveling closer to her heart.
Her hands were like claws, sinking into the dirt, pulling for an escape. But her skin was melting away, turning to ash in the wind until she could see boils sprout along her forearms and bone stick out from the tips of her fingers.
The pain was unlike anything she had ever experienced. She was burning. She was boiling alive. Even her sweat was hot enough to sting. Her last ounce of strength was spent and she was falling, falling into a black abyss, a bottomless hole. And the flames chased after her, scorching her toes, raining down upon her as she continued to fall, and fall, and fall…
Kira jerked awake.
She bolted upright and her vision swam with the head rush, but she didn’t care. She heaved, forcing air into her lungs. Her throat was dry. She couldn’t breathe. The air was too thick and it scratched its way down into her burning lungs. Kira clutched at her chest, willing her heart to slow down before it burst apart.
“Kira?” Tristan’s hand was on her back, trying to soothe her.
“Water,” she croaked and he disappeared, only to return a minute later with a glass of cold water in his hands. Kira grabbed for it and greedily drank it down.
The chill brought her focus back. Kira blinked away the black spots in her vision, slowed down her breath, and collapsed against her pillow with wide eyes.
“Kira, what happened?” Tristan propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at her. Kira forced herself to smile.
“It was just a bad dream, nothing to worry about,” she told him. But deep down, Kira knew it was so much more than that. Already her mind was buzzing, trying to figure out what it all meant. She had killed herself. This wasn’t just a simple, brush-it-off nightmare.
Tristan sighed happily and ran his fingers down the length of her arm. “I never thought the day would come that I could look at you and know it wasn’t for the last time. There’s no countdown anymore, Kira. We have all the time in the world now.”
Kira wanted to mirror his excitement. She wanted to believe that forever was just within reach, but for some reason his words made her feel hollow inside.
“If we have all the time in the world, I think I’m going to use some of it for a nap,” Kira said and rolled over. She nestled her head in the pillow and closed her eyes.
“We just woke up,” Tristan laughed quietly.
“True, but that doesn’t mean we can’t go right back to sleep.”
Tristan pushed her hair to the side and kissed her cheek. “I’m going down to speak with Aldrich. See you in a little while,” he whispered into her ear before slipping off the bed.
Kira stayed curled up in a ball, listening to the soft shuffling of his feet on the rugs. She kept her breath even, only releasing a shuddering sigh after the door behind Tristan had clicked closed.
And then she felt alone. Completely and utterly alone in the world.
Kira clutched her necklace, felt the comfortable contours of her father’s ring, but then dismissed that charm for the small little sun next to it. The edges were sharp, pointed, but still smooth. And most of all, it made her think of Luke.
For a moment, Kira could picture him right there beside her. First, he would look around the room—at the white tile floor, modern rugs, and porcelain mantle—and mutter something like, “Well, this doesn’t scream ax-murderer at all.” Kira would laugh while he continued on the rant. “Tile, in a bedroom? I guess it beats a coffin, but seriously.” Maybe he would place one tanned hand against the white wall, and then his eyes would get that mischievous look Kira was so used to seeing.
“Luke,” Kira would say sternly, chiding him for whatever idea was already running through his head.
“What?” He would pretend to be innocent, but then the truth would come out. “I was just thinking, wondering really, what Aldrich would do if we threw a bucket of bright orange paint on the wall. I’ve never seen a vampire temper tantrum.” And Kira would giggle.
But then she realized she was giggling. Her vision of Luke evaporated, but her laughter remained for a second longer, until she remembered yesterday. Luke was pissed at her and for good reason. She had been horrible to him. She didn’t deserve his jokes. She didn’t even deserve the mirage of his voice. But she needed it.
Kira clutched the charm around her neck and thought about Luke. She gathered her power, let her hand turn to flame, and reached out with her mind to search for him. Blindly, Kira called his name with her head, hoping his subconscious would hear her plea.
But there was nothing. Luke was too far away for Kira to hear, and she felt as if she were suffocating again. Kira ran from the bed and pushed the heavy black curtains to the side. In an instant, her entire room was glowing with sunlight. The heat sank into her skin and Kira let it comfort and warm her. She gathered two tiny flames on each of her palms, trying to heal herself, but her fire wasn’t strong enough to heal the wounds of a lonely heart.
She opened her eyes and looked up into the sun, not caring that the bright light stung her pupils. She needed the sun. It was the only thing she had left to comfort her. And with that thought, Kira finally understood why she had woken up feeling so hollow this morning.
She blinked away the sunspots in her eyes and looked at the landscape below her window. Her room overlooked the ruins of the old castle. While they had scared her the night before, Kira saw the stones clearly this morning.
They weren’t scary, just sad. The old stones were once the pillars of a glorious castle, an undefeatable fortress that people might have feared in the middle ages. They could have been battered by cannons, pierced with arrows, sliced with swords, or bombarded with bullets. But none of those things brought these walls down. Time had brought them down as it did with everything. Some mortar had been loosened by the root of an ivy vine, and soon enough an entire wall came crumbling apart. No one bothered with repairs because by that time, castles were old and out of fashion. So the world continued turning, nature continued battering this old castle, bringing it down stone by stone. Heavy storms broke through the windows, winds toppled a column, and soon enough this glorious castle was nothing but a pile of rubble on the ground.
Looking at those ruins was like looking into her own heart. Time would never stop. The world would never disappear. And in the sobering morning light, Kira finally saw last night for what it had really been. Not her impossible dreams coming true. Not the beginning of perfect happiness. But an end—a desperate attempt to hold on to something that had already slipped through her fingers.
Time had already taken its toll. Time had already ruined what she and Tristan had, but it wouldn’t ruin her. Kira looked down on that castle with determination, not sadness. She was content. She loved Tristan, and part of her would always love him, but she had always known goodbye was inevitable. Even if she never wanted to admit it, the thought had always been there in the back of her mind.
Because she did love Tristan, but she loved herself more. And she couldn’t do what he wanted. The cost of being together was too great. Standing there in the morning sunlight, Kira finally understood. She was the sun. She was the fire. And she couldn’t give up her power or her soul just to be with him.
Chapter Seven
Kira had thought that the lie she had told Luke would be the biggest in her life—that pretending to go to Sonnyville all the while planning a trip to a foreign country would be the hardest trick she would ever play.
But Kira was wrong. This was far worse. Because until she uncovered what Aldrich was really up to, Kira would have to fool Tristan with the dream of forever. And that was truly unforgivable.
So as Kira walked down the grand staircase, in jeans and a T-shirt rather than the frilly dress Aldrich had left hanging in the closet, all she felt was guilt. It was a heavy, wet blanket cloaking her, weighing her down. And it took everything she had to shrug it off of her shoulders and put a smile on her face before turning the corner to the dining room.
If you want a show, Kira thought at Aldrich, I’ll give you a show.
“Good morning, everyone,” Kira chirped happily as she entered the room. She looked at the woman sitting at the table and deepened her smile. “Mom,” Kira said warmly before taking her seat next to Tristan. Aldrich and her fake mother both sat with full glasses of blood, but Tristan wasn’t sipping anything. Two cooked eggs, bacon, and toast were artfully laid out on the table in front of Kira’s seat. Still hot, she thought gratefully and decided she may as well gather her strength with some food.
“Tristan seemed to think you were indisposed,” Aldrich droned. “Glad to see he was wrong.”
“I was just a little sleepy,” Kira said and took a huge bite of food, wondering what sort of kitchen this house had. Surely the servants needed to be fed, and it seemed pretty stocked, but what sort of vampire kept such a nice kitchen in his house? Unless there were more humans here than she realized. “So what were you all talking about before I came in?”
“You,” Aldrich replied. Tristan gave him a stern look.
“About how the talk with your mom went last night,” he said and rested his hand on her thigh reassuringly.
“How did it go?” Kira asked, trying to keep the ice from her voice.
“I thought quite well,” the woman said. “But there is so much more that I want to tell you.”
“Well that works out perfectly, because there is a lot more I want to hear.” Like what you did with my real mother and how you learned so much about her life, Kira wanted to scream. Instead, she took a long sip of orange juice and swallowed the words back down. Be cool, she chided herself.
“So…” Kira said, wondering how to make idle chit chat with a man who probably wanted to kill her and a woman impersonating her mother who also probably wanted to kill her. “Nice day out,” Kira finally said. Weather was almost always a safe topic, unless of course you were talking to vampires who hated the sun, she realized a second too late.
“There’s a beautiful garden outside,” the woman said, her face still plastered with a smile. “Feel free to walk around. Aldrich has a marvelous sculpture collection.”
“Do you still have that Augustus Saint-Gaudens we stole?” Tristan asked with a smirk.
Aldrich copied his expression before replying, “Of course.”
Since when did Tristan treat Aldrich like an old friend? Kira thought. Yesterday he was offering up endless warnings about trusting this man and now he’s reminiscing about days gone by?
“That’s a funny story. You should tell Kira,” the woman said, and Kira noticed that though her eyes were on Tristan, her hand held Aldrich’s.
“What year was it? 1892?” Tristan asked and Aldrich nodded. Kira couldn’t quite decipher the look in his eye. It seemed almost like satisfaction, like all the pieces of his plan were falling into place. Kira looked away and tuned into Tristan’s story, which was already half-done.
“So we snuck into his studio, curious about this second Diana statue he was putting together. And we found a third copy that nobody knew about—an even smaller version—and we took it. Saint-Gaudens must have realized, but he never told the papers or the police. Not like we could have been caught anyway.” Tristan finished with a laugh. His eyes were glazed over thinking of the memory.
Kira couldn’t stand it, the camaraderie with Aldrich. It was too much. Without realizing it, she was standing and all three of them were looking at her.
“I, uh,” Kira fumbled for an excuse. “I need some fresh air. Might as well go see this infamous sculpture for myself.”
With that, Kira walked out of the room, right out the front door and into the daylight. At the edge of the circular driveway, Kira saw a stone path and decided to follow it.
The walkway took her around the side of the house to the gardens in the backyard, and Aldrich wasn’t lying, they were impressive. Box-like hedges cut geometric patterns through paths of stone and within the triangles of crisscrossing lines were mounds of colorful flowers. Jutting out from the flowers were sculptures, maybe a dozen of them. Most of them were classical figures cut from white marble, but a few were aged bronze. On the far side, Kira saw the sculpture of a woman balanced on one foot hoisting an arrow, and she realized that must be the Diana they were talking about. Kira looked away. She didn’t really want to relive that story time.
Like the inside of Aldrich’s home, the garden seemed gaudy and too perfect to be really beautiful. Kira preferred wildness, like the rose garden in London—gorgeous chaos. She looked back at the castle behind her. It was masculine, demanding. The stones were rough, some of the lines were uneven, and the design wasn’t quite symmetrical. The garden, with its pristine and controlled grace, didn’t fit the building behind it.
Kira found a bronze bench hidden in the hedges and sat down. She pulled her phone from her pocket and did the only thing she could think of doing in that moment.
Luke? She sent the text message to his phone. She couldn’t call him—not with Tristan so close that he could hear every word they said. It didn’t matter anyway. There was no reply.
I’m sorry. She sent the message before remembering he had smashed his phone yesterday and probably didn’t have a new one yet.
&n
bsp; I miss you. She sent that last one more for herself.
“Kira?”
She turned at the sound of Tristan’s voice and made room for him to sit next to her.
“Kira, what’s wrong?” he asked and when she opened her mouth to dismiss the notion, he beat her to the punch with an, “and don’t say nothing.”
Kira sighed. Maybe this total and complete lie wasn’t worth it. Maybe she could let a few of her doubts show. Surely Aldrich was expecting some resistance.
“I just don’t understand,” Kira started but then changed her tactics. “I mean, yesterday you were 'Mr. I Hate Aldrich, Aldrich Is Not To Be Trusted'. And now you’re the president of his fan club. At breakfast you were like two frat brothers talking about the good old days. It doesn’t make sense, Tristan.” Kira curled her knees into her chest and hugged her body close.
“He’s changed, Kira. I don’t know how, but he has.”
“How can you be so sure?” Kira asked. Tristan’s hands were in his lap and he rested on his forearms. His eyes stared straight ahead, past the garden to the rolling green hills in the distance.
“Yesterday, when you were talking with your mom, Aldrich and I went to his study to talk. You want to know the first thing he said to me? I’m sorry!” Tristan shook his head in disbelief. “He actually apologized for all of the vile things he made me do when he turned me. He said they were wrong. He said he doesn’t do it anymore.”
Kira opened her mouth to speak, but Tristan kept talking. “I didn’t believe him either, not at first, but I searched the house. I reached out with my senses, listening for the moan of a girl in pain or the sound of a cell locking shut. I couldn’t hear anything, anywhere.”
“What about the girls we saw last night?” Kira asked, thinking of their empty stares and scarred necks.
“Contractual. They give him blood for a period of five years and then he turns them.”
“Still,” Kira said, looking at him with wide eyes, “you saw their faces.”
The Complete Midnight Fire Series Page 47
