They jumped through a small stream, and Kira relished the cool droplets that splashed onto her cheeks.
"We're almost there," her mother called back, nearly falling as she turned around to meet Kira's eyes, checking to make sure her daughter was still with them, but in what sense Kira wasn't sure.
And then she saw the clearing up ahead, the bright silver of their car. All three of them sped up, closing the gap quickly, until finally they were all sitting in leather seats, silent except for deep and heavy breathing.
Kira's mother reached for the phone she had left in the car and quickly dialed a number.
"Hello… Yes, I think I need to report a fire… yes, there's a lot of smoke coming through the trees… I don't know what else it could be… I'm driving through the mountains, maybe an hour east of the airport… yes, on that main road… you see it? On the satellite feed?… great, thank you… yes, you too. Have a wonderful day."
She hung up.
More silence.
No one even knew where to begin.
Kira stretched her fingers, bringing her flames just close enough to the surface that she could see the glow under her palms. It was still there. Deep inside, the sun was still there.
She sighed, leaning her head back against the seat to stare at the smoke leaking over the trees and onto the road.
Ominous. That was the only word that came to mind.
"Maybe we should, you know, leave? With the fire and everything, it doesn’t seem safe," Kira said while keeping her gaze on the forest. She couldn't see the actual fire yet.
Her mom started the car, slipping away from the curb and making a u-turn on the empty street. They were headed back to the airport.
"So," Kira said quietly, not sure how to finish it. All she knew was she needed a distraction, something to keep the image of her broken home from taking over.
"So," Luke said, taking a deep breath and rubbing his hands against his face, "so you really are turning into a vampire?"
"Yeah," she said quietly, ignoring her mother's concerned gaze, "I think I am."
"Then," he said and reached into his pocket, "we have some reading to do."
"You found something?" Her mom gasped, perking up ever so slightly.
"We did," Kira said and squeezed her fingers.
Luke tapped her head with the bundle of pages, scratching her skin, but Kira didn’t take them. Instead, she reclined her seat until it was almost flat and pressed her fingers into her temples. Her head was pounding.
"Can you just read it to us?" She asked.
Luke looked down at her with a smirk, his eyebrow raised.
"Come on, that way my mom can hear."
Kira closed her eyes, not waiting for another sarcastic reaction. But she heard him shift on the leather seats, getting comfortable. Then came the sandpaper like sound of shuffling pages.
"Dear Diary," Luke began, "I think my best friend is trying to kill me."
"Luke," she said wryly, not amused. Except, dang it, a smirk started to pull at her lip.
"Okay, okay." He coughed, getting back into the right mindset, and started to hum a little while he scanned for something interesting.
And hum.
And hum.
"Luke," Kira said, trying to lighten her annoyed tone, "a vital part of reading something out loud is, you know, actually reading it out loud."
He sighed. "I'm looking for something new. Right now, he's just talking about the missing pages from that text, the ones we got from your grandfather. It's all Protector and scientific—about the madness, the loss of control—but there's nothing about angels or any of that."
"Humph." Kira crossed her arms, thinking.
"I'd like to hear it…" Her mother said from the front, keeping her attention on the road.
"Oh, right," Luke said, suddenly alert. He sat up and started reading quoted passages from the text. Kira tuned it out. She'd heard it all before. The Protectors thought their biggest fear was her losing control, her fire turning deadly to humans, her oncoming madness. They didn't even know the half of it—that the madness was the least of their concern. It was what would come after. The killing. The biting. The blood.
Kira rubbed at the spot between her eyes. Better not to think about it, not when there was still some hope left.
"Oo, this is interesting," Kira perked up while Luke held the paper to her face, "it says 'madness=falling?'" The scribble was unquoted, unsourced. Just a moment of pure thought from her father. She liked that he used the symbol instead of writing the word equal—it was quick and efficient, getting right to the point.
"What do you think he meant?"
"Well, madness for the Protectors was the moment the fire consumed the mixed-breed conduits. When their flames exploded out of them, burning entire villages to the ground, only stopping once they died. At least, that's what the academics thought."
"But falling is completely different," Kira said, thinking out loud, "it's like something takes over inside of me, I can't even feel my fire anymore, there's just this darkness, this smoke that blocks everything else out."
"Maybe to you, but that's not what it looked like to us," her mother said softly. Kira heard her breath shake.
"That's genius Mrs. D!" Luke exclaimed, shuffling in his seat excitedly. "The madness and the falling, they're the same thing. You practically just burned a forest down, and to us it looked like you were exploding with fire, totally out of control. The madness, get it? But inside, you were really changing, falling."
"That makes sense! It felt like maybe the sun was leaving me, like my powers had run out, but in reality they were being pushed out. The vampire was forcing out the sun, trying to make the change complete." Kira shuddered. How close had she just come to completely crossing over? "But how does this help us?"
Luke bit his lip, and looked back down at the papers. "Not sure yet. But we learned something, which is a start."
"Madness," Luke muttered under his breath as he skimmed, "control…fire…burning…killed…" Kira didn’t like where this was going. "Here, look at this," Luke said and held the pages above her head again.
But what about the healing? Her father had scrawled. Does it go away or is that the key? Will it save her?
All questions, no answers.
"What do you think?"
Kira shrugged. "I don't know, it's not something I really keep track of. Although," Kira thought back to the fight outside of Sonnyville. Her broken back. Her useless limbs. It had taken a while to heal herself, so long that her mother would have died if not for Pavia. At the time, Kira thought it was just the degree of the injury, but that had never stopped her before.
She thought back further, back to her first visit to Sonnyville. A vampire had flipped their car over, mangled it into pieces and Kira had managed to not only save herself, but also Luke, his sister Vanessa and that girl Casey, who Kira refused to acknowledge as his ex-girlfriend. They all would've died, would have been ripped apart by the car.
In comparison, a broken back seemed miniscule.
Kira looked up, meeting her mother's eyes in the rearview mirror. They quickly flicked back to the road, trying to mask the worry.
"Give me your arm," she said to Luke, looking for a scrape. She flipped his hand over, running her eyes along his forearms until—aha, there we go, a nice red cut scarred his elbow.
Shifting in her seat, Kira placed her hand over the spot, letting her mind go blank so she could focus on his skin. Seal shut, she thought and pictured the red wound lightening to pink until it disappeared entirely. Her head began to ache, a dull feeling at the crown of her neck.
A few minutes later, when she couldn't concentrate anymore, Kira pulled her hand back. The cut was gone.
Luke looked up, his mind already spinning in circles of what it could mean, of how she could heal herself. But Kira had a different thought entirely: tough. It had been too difficult. Her healing used to come as second nature, without a thought.
"It's going away,"
she said quietly.
"What are you talking about, going away? It is gone," Luke said, twisting his elbow around to look at the newly repaired spot.
"No, my healing, it's going away. It's getting harder."
His arm dropped. His heart followed. Kira felt the echo in her mind and closed the bond, tightly shutting it.
Nodding toward the paper, Kira asked, "What else does it say? My father's research?"
"Not much." Luke handed her the pages, letting Kira do the reading.
The words were small, the letters straight and slightly slanted to the left. It read like a stream of consciousness, like thoughts pouring from his head. More about the madness, the Protectors, their beliefs. Of course that's what he would write down, Kira thought, all of the Punisher culture was in his head, ingrained in his very being.
She flipped over the last page. Nothing new. Nothing she hadn't heard before.
Angels.
Kira stopped, her mind caught by the word she had skimmed over. Backtracking, Kira reread the line.
"The story of the two angels…" She murmured. Searching the page for more information. What story? What angels? But there was nothing, no other mention.
"What'd you say?" Luke asked, looking over her shoulder.
"The story of the two angels," Kira repeated, just as perplexed as before.
"What story?"
Kira rolled her eyes. "I don’t know."
Her mother sucked in a breath. Kira head snapped toward the steering wheel. "I do," her mother said and a smile slowly spread across her face, "I know it."
"Go Mom!" Kira reached up for the high five and received a resounding slap.
"Sliding in for the win," Luke cheered from the back seat.
It was silent for a moment. Her mom was thinking, trying to drive and bring back an old memory at the same time.
"So, what is it?" Kira asked, impatient.
"Yeah, what is it?" Luke repeated, sounding like a five-year-old.
"It's an old Punisher legend, sort of like a creation story," her mother began, "I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier, although I'm not sure how truthful or helpful it is."
"It's okay," Kira placed a hand above her mother's, letting their fingers intertwine over the clutch, "anything will help, Mom."
"Do you remember the first Punisher story, the story of how vampires and conduits came to be? Lucifer fell first, bringing other corrupted angels to the earth with him, where they feasted on human blood and turned humans into their own twisted puppets. Seeing this, the pure angels asked God to release them from the heavens so they could bring their brothers back, could save them from themselves, and God agreed. But soon even the pure angels began to change, began to fall. So to save their souls and the earth itself, they split their powers in half, becoming conduits—beings strong enough to fight the newly created once-human vampires, but not blessed enough to fall into the darkness."
"Right," Kira replied, "that's what the other Punisher told me, back in Aldrich's dungeon. What do two angels have to do with it?"
"Well, within all of this madness, two of the pure angels fell in love."
"It always comes down to a love story," Luke said quietly from the back seat.
"It does," her mom said, smiling sadly into the rearview mirror before turning back to the road, "and like most love stories, this one is star-crossed. The woman had a best friend, a true brother, who had fallen with Lucifer, turning into an evil, mangled original vampire. And the man had a true sister who was killed by his love's brother."
"Jeez, talk about bad luck," Kira muttered under her breath. Why did every story seem to have a sad ending these days?
"But still, the two of them fell in love, and when they realized that the darkness was coming for them, that they would be unable to hold on much longer, an idea came—a way to save each other. They would ask God to strip their divinity, to make them human, so they could live together on earth for however many years a short mortal life allowed. God agreed.
"And when the day came, they held hands, waiting for their powers to be stripped. As the sun leaked from their bodies, however, a thought came to each of them. The woman, still believing her brother was alive somewhere, wished for the power to save him. And the man, wanting more than anything to avenge his sister, wished for the power to end that vampire's life.
"And when God's eternal fire left their bodies, two different people emerged. A Protector and a Punisher. Two races, two flames and two paths. Knowing what their love would bring, what a child might mean, they went different ways, changing more original angels to their respective causes. And though their love remained strong until they died, the two never saw each other again."
"That is the worst bedtime story ever," Luke said, sighing and leaning back against his seat.
"Tell me about it," her mother remarked, "I used to have nightmares as a child, not dreams."
"But how does it help us?" He asked.
"I'm not sure," her mother said softly.
But Kira had an idea. It was about making a choice. Keep her Punisher powers to kill Aldrich, avenging both her parents and Tristan. Or keep her Protector powers to stay with Luke.
A choice.
Aldrich or Luke.
Her parents or Luke.
Tristan or Luke.
She rolled over, searching the skyline. Smoke. Black clouds still billowed into the air above the trees. All it did was remind her that time was running out. That she needed to choose.
Or a lot more than a forest would burn.
The whole world would crumble.
Chapter Twelve
"There's one thing I don't quite understand," Luke said. The two of them were driving to his house to meet with Tristan and Pavia.
The flight home from West Virginia had been miserable. Kira feigned sleep for most of the ride, unable to sort through her tumultuous thoughts.
Luke picked up his car from the airport parking lot and dropped her mother off at home. Kira wanted to run inside, to hug her little sister and give her father a kiss, but she was supposed to be in Sonnyville, happy and safe. And her facial expression would have given her away, would have made her father know something was wrong. Besides, they had work to do.
There was always more work to do. And the more they drove, the more she worried that Luke saw it too—saw the indecision etched into her features.
Silence filled the car. Luke wanted to read her mind. And Kira, more than anything, wanted to hide that there was still a choice to make, still an unexpected barrier between their futures together.
"What?" Kira asked. Luke had said something, but she had been too deep into her own head to hear him.
"I said, there's one thing I don't quite understand."
"Only one? I'm impressed," Kira mocked, covering up her worry with a smirk.
"Ha. Ha," He drawled, "I meant one thing about the fight. I don't understand how the vampires knew we were there."
"Hm," Kira shrugged, unbuckling her seatbelt as Luke's house came into view.
"Don't you think it's strange? That place was totally deserted for years and then on the one day that we're there, a whole troop of vampires is too?"
"Yeah, it's weird," Kira said, pausing while they both stepped out of the car, "but I've seen weirder. One of them probably saw us in the airport or on the road and just followed the car."
"I guess," Luke said, but he squinted one eye, pursing his lips in dissatisfaction.
"Is that music?" Kira asked, straining her ears. It sounded like a violin was playing softly inside of Luke's home. The sound grew as they approached the front door. A soft peel of laughter joined it, followed by a deep muffled voice.
Luke unlocked the door.
Kira's eyebrows drew together. A sharp inhale sucked air into her suddenly burning lungs and an invisible punch knocked her gut, making her stumble backward on unsteady feet.
Tristan and Pavia stood arm in arm in the center of the living room—one hand around her hip, ano
ther around his neck, two joined together. He twirled her in a circle. She laughed at her misstep and he smiled, whispering something into her ear. The lights were dimmed. The music romantic. And Kira knew Pavia was anything but clumsy. The first memory Pavia had shared with Kira was of her dancing before a crowd—graceful and smooth.
A brown eye caught Kira's.
Tristan released Pavia, letting her go and stepping a foot backwards, away from the vampire's body. He shook his head, confused, looking between the two girls, fighting with two different versions of himself.
Pavia spun, her cheeks puffing into a grin. "Welcome home. Tristan was just showing me how to dance," she placed a hand on his forearm, "and he's a wonderful teacher."
"Funny, I thought you already knew how," Kira replied, hating the jealousy dripping from her voice. This was totally allowed. She had given Tristan up. But even so, the thought of someone else touching him ripped at her heart.
"Not the waltz, silly," Pavia said and stepped back, giggling and sitting on the couch. Maybe Kira was reading too much into the situation…
"How was your visit?" Tristan asked, letting the words come out slowly, carefully, as if he wasn't sure what, if any, line had been crossed.
Kira walked farther into the room, taking the only open seat next to Pavia so both boys had to settle into armchairs. She didn't look at Luke. "Eventful. Any word from your friends?"
"Alessandro should be calling with an update soon, sometime tonight." Alessandro? Kira silently questioned, before remembering him as Hawk-Nose, the one trying infiltrate Aldrich's inner-circle.
"We ran into some vampires while we were there," Luke interrupted, "I was just telling Kira how odd it seemed to me."
Pavia shrugged, blowing the ever-straying lock of hair from her forehead, "Maybe. Someone probably just saw you at the airport. Unless you think they followed you all the way from Charleston?"
"No," Luke sighed, letting the word drag out, "If they followed us here from Sonnyville, they probably wouldn't have waited so long to strike."
"What if they followed her mom?"
Kira perked up.
Scorch (Midnight Fire Series) Page 13