Kira fought the urge to turn around and break the spell. One last night in each other’s arms wasn’t too much to ask, and the time for words had passed.
Chapter Thirteen
When Kira woke up the next morning, Tristan was already gone. She brought a hand to her shoulder, trying to trap the feel of the soft kiss she had fallen asleep to. But like everything else in her life, it was too late, and with a sigh she rolled off the bed, landing silently on her feet.
Dressing quickly, Kira made her way downstairs to the dining room where all three of the vampires awaited her. In her rush, she missed the timing and there were still three goblets nearly emptied of blood on the table. Kira couldn’t help but notice the red tint to Tristan’s lips, the slight flush on his cheeks. Controlling her reaction, she sat down next to him, kissed his cheek, and brought his hand into her lap.
“Good morning, everyone,” Kira said after a moment.
“Did you sleep well?” the woman asked.
“It was the perfect last night,” Kira said, squeezing Tristan’s hand while she spoke and hoping he caught the real meaning of her words.
“And morning,” Aldrich droned, “it’s past noon already.”
“Really?” Kira asked, and her stomach rumbled loudly. She laughed under her breath. Finally, some perfect timing. “Seeing as I’m still human, I need some grub.”
“I thought you might like to make it yourself,” Tristan told her. The idea sounded sweet, but the gesture was pre-planned—she needed a reason to be digging around the kitchen.
Kira turned to Aldrich, raising her eyebrows as if asking for permission.
“My house is your house,” Aldrich said. “Besides, Tristan and I have things to discuss. Lana, my dear, why don’t you start preparing for the ceremony in the meantime.”
The woman nodded, and Kira caught the worshiping look in her eyes. She was a slave and didn’t even realize it. The idea made Kira’s toes curl in her socks.
But then Kira’s stomach growled loudly again, breaking the silence.
“I’ll take that as my cue to go.” Kira jumped up from her seat. She kissed Tristan on the cheek, trying her best to maintain their soul mate status and ignore his rigid posture, before disappearing around the bend.
Now the work really begins, Kira thought. She walked into the kitchen and used her phone to turn some music on. Then she lit the fire on the stovetop, ran some water, and started pretending to ruffle the shelves, looking for ingredients. In the refrigerator, Kira found a secret stash of medical blood and stole two pints. Perfect for bribing Pavia.
She quickly fried some eggs, put potatoes in the oven, and started a pot of fresh oatmeal. Just in case any vampires were listening, it would sound like Kira was really in there cooking one heck of a last breakfast.
In reality, she was taking one last deep breath and standing in front of the freezer. Steeling her nerves for whatever Pavia had to show her, Kira pressed the small button on the side of the handle, and the door to the tunnels cracked silently open.
Tristan said he could guarantee her an hour of alone time, and fifteen minutes of that had already passed. When Kira found herself completely shrouded in darkness, she lit a flame and hit the tunnels at a run. Along the way, she spotted the female vampire in her room, laying out a deep red dress. But there was no sign of Tristan or Aldrich, and Kira just hoped they were in a soundproof room, oblivious to what she was doing.
Five minutes later, Kira found herself panting at the entrance of the dungeon with five curious pairs of eyes pointed in her direction.
“Didn’t think we’d see you back here again after that oh-so-dramatic exit yesterday,” the female vampire, Pavia, drawled in a voice laced with sarcasm.
Still breathing heavy, Kira panted, “I came to,” she stopped to breathe again, taking this as a reminder to exercise more often. “You’re all going to be free in a couple hours' time.” Why not just get to the chase? Kira thought.
“I’m starting to enjoy these little visits,” Pavia said with a smirk, while the male Punisher sat up and asked, “How can this be?”
Kira chose to ignore Pavia, and she faced the other prisoners instead. “Conduits are coming to save you all. They’ll be here in a few hours. I won’t be with them, but I promise that you can trust everyone and that they’ll keep you safe.”
One of the Protector females started to speak, but Kira reached her hand out to stop her.
“I’m sorry, I can’t explain anything else. I don’t have time,” she said, rushing her words and not caring that they lacked finesse. Then Kira turned to Pavia. “Yesterday, you said something about showing me some memories you knew I’d want to see. You know who my mother was, don’t you? You know something about Aldrich’s plan?”
Pavia shrugged. Her face was inscrutable. “Did you bring anything with you?” She sniffed the air, letting a smirk lighten her features. No use hiding it, Kira thought and retrieved two bags of blood from the grocery bag she brought with her.
“I’ll give you one now, and you’ll get the other one if you give me information that I can use.”
“Deal,” Pavia agreed and then moved languidly toward the opening of her cell. Kira dropped the bag to the ground. Lightning fast, it was cracked open and at Pavia’s mouth. Before Kira could blink, the blood vanished and the bag was drip dry. Pavia smacked her lips, satisfied, before turning to Kira with an open expression. “What do you want to see?”
“Let’s start with your memories. You have met her, haven’t you?” Kira asked, trying not to let her voice sound too hopeful. Pavia nodded and stretched her hand out of her cell, waiting for Kira’s touch. For a second, Kira met her blue eyes, and they almost seemed friendly, maybe even concerned or sorry.
But then their fingers were touching and Kira was falling, her vision was receding, her senses disappearing, her mind swirling into mush…
Kira opened her eyes, struggling against the cavity of pain in her stomach. She was hungry, so hungry. Her hands stretched forward, touching glass. She couldn’t get out. But then voices were echoing down the hall, getting closer. A sweet smell startled her—sugar and wine and strawberries—floating closer and closer. Only one thing could smell so sweet, so delectable, and then a blonde woman—bleeding, hurt, barely conscious but oh so lovely—was thrown into the room.
“I want to know everything in her tiny little head,” a voice snapped. Kira’s attention was pulled from the woman, and she focused on the hard black eyes of Aldrich. An instant hatred rose in her chest, a challenge. He rolled his eyes. “You are so predictable, Pavia. Must it be a fight every time?”
She didn’t move.
Aldrich leaned against the glass, fingers clenched to hold in his anger. His voice was tight and commanding. “You know I always win, so quit the games and maybe I’ll reward you with a taste.” She tried to keep her senses closed off, but the smell of fresh blood leaking from fresh wounds was too much to ignore. The scent, now buttery and baked, filled her mind, making her inch closer to the door of her tiny cell against her will. She was so hungry.
And then her hand was reaching out, and memories flooded her body in quick flashes she couldn’t even process properly. A house with a white-picket fence. A smiling woman and stern man. Blonde children running around. A bright green square. A circle of older men talking to a crowd. A dark city. An attacking vampire. A redheaded man. Fire—consuming her, lighting her up. The man again, older, love written across his features. And then concern. And then a sense of fear. A small child with blonde and red curls dusting the top of her head. Flames sprouting from pudgy hands. A house in the middle of the woods. Secrets and fear. Finally a walk through a forest. A sudden attack. Teeth sinking into her skin. A baby’s cry, a man’s grunt of pain, and then silence.
Kira fell back against the floor, her mind buzzing with the images, her nose buzzing with the scent.
Deep ebony black eyes stared at her, breaking through the confusion.
“Pavia, what did you see?�
�� Aldrich asked, urgently.
“A baby…” she said slowly. Trying to gain control over the memories flashing fast-forward in her head.
“What baby?” His eyes were starting to lighten, turning from night to day in an instant. Speckles of blue that were almost white spotted the irises like falling snow. Uncontrolled excitement was evident on Aldrich’s face as he reached his hand under the barricade. “Show me,” he demanded, grabbing her hand.
Before she had time to register it, the memories were flooding into Aldrich’s skin, sinking deeply into the crevices of his mind. She wanted to fight, wanted to deny him the thing he so clearly wanted to know, but his fingers dug like claws into her hand, and she was so hungry, she couldn’t fight it.
Maniacal laughter pierced her senses, and the door of her cell was flung open. “Your reward, Pavia,” Aldrich hissed and threw the blonde woman into her cell. The body landed a foot away from her, so tantalizingly close that she forgot escape was just a foot away if she could move fast enough.
But she hesitated, looking at the glistening red blood dripping on the floor next to her.
And with a hiss, her moment was gone and the door was shut once more. Kira looked down at the sallow, sunken face of the woman before her. But she didn’t see a person. She saw a meal and her fangs ached for the feel of flesh. The body never even stirred as she sucked the last seconds of life from it…
The blackness took over Kira’s real vision again.
“I only have one more memory of your mother,” Pavia’s voice distantly said. But before Kira could respond, swirls of colors flashed past her eyes like a spinning vortex, and she was falling once more. She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision, trying to bring the dancing hues together into an image…
Kira felt metal wrap tightly around her neck and felt the gaping hole in the pit of her stomach, the pain far worse than it had been before. Her vision was blurry, just barely broken out into separate colors.
Moving her finger, feeling the scratch of dry veins, was excruciating, but still she tugged at the collar around her throat. A hand struck her cheek, whipping her head to the side and making her almost steady vision go haywire again.
“Show her,” a harsh voice said, savage desire evident in the words. If her mouth weren’t sandpaper, she would have spit at the polished shoes she now saw below her.
Another slap, another swimming sense of vision, another unfulfilled urge to dishonor the man standing before her. Finally, the image pulled together and she recognized Aldrich looming above her. His fangs poked out and he hissed in her direction, angry. Despite the pain infiltrating her senses, a slight sense of happiness pulled through at the sight of his distress.
“Let me,” a hesitant but soothing voice spoke from behind Aldrich. He shifted to the side, revealing a brown-haired woman with pearly skin and classic English features.
Aldrich growled, and the woman bent to her knees before Kira, taking his noise as a sign of ascent.
“Pavia,” she cooed, bringing her hands to Kira’s cheeks. Her thumbs wiped away tears that Kira didn’t realize were there. “Pavia, it is almost over. All you need to do is show me, and I will let your hunger end. They don’t matter to you, they are not important, not as important as your life. Don’t you want to eat, don’t you want the taste of fresh blood on your tongue again?” The more the woman continued in her soft monotone voice, the more Kira fell under her spell. Dizzy with hunger and delirious with the dream of warm blood, the memories poured from her.
As the images left her hands and met the woman’s skin, her features began to change. Her dark brown hair lightened, at first a shade or two, and then quickly the roots turned blonde, stretching out to the tips in a wave of yellow. Her nose shrank, the button tip elongated slightly and the crown narrowed, forcing two large eyes further apart from one another. Her cheekbones rose, turning a round face into a more angular one, until all of a sudden, Kira was staring into the face of her own mother. Except for the eyes—the eyes were still blue and untouched.
“It is done?” Aldrich asked. The woman nodded, and Kira felt a kick break her spine as she cried out and fell to the floor…
But suddenly it was the real dungeon floor that smacked against Kira’s cheek, and it was her own scream being ripped from her throat as reality came crashing back, wracking her body wave after wave after wave.
“You killed her,” Kira said. Her cheek was still pressed against the cold stone floor. Her eyes weren’t moving, but from the peripheral she saw Pavia sink back from the front of her cell into a seated position.
“Aldrich killed your mother, I just finished the job,” she said. Her tone was serious and quiet.
“But you did it, you sucked the last breaths from her body,” Kira said. Her voice was scratchy and soft.
“I did, and I can’t say it was just the hunger, even to ease your pain. I’m a vampire. It’s what we do,” Pavia said. Her voice held no remorse. The words were matter-of-fact.
“And the woman?” Kira asked. She still hadn’t moved. Her body was contorted on the ground in the same way that she had fallen out of Pavia’s memories. In an odd way, she probably looked like her mother, minutes before death.
“A weak vampire with the unique power to change her features—otherwise known as Aldrich’s plaything.” Disgust rang heavy in Pavia’s voice.
“Why didn’t you show me yesterday?” Kira asked, finally pushing her heavy body from the floor to sit up. Her head pounded as though stepped on.
Pavia shrugged. “Yesterday, you had nothing to offer me. Today you have food and freedom—everything an imprisoned girl dreams of.” She smirked. “And you grew on me, what can I say?”
“I wish the feeling were mutual,” Kira snorted, waiting for her headache to subside.
“Eh, I can tell that you don’t really blame me for what happened. You know just as well as I do who the real culprit is.”
After a second of thought, Kira tossed the other bag of blood through the opening of the cell and ignored the stares of the conduits and the human behind her. She ignored their protesting voices too. Pavia had earned her payment.
“Do you still have my mother’s memories?” Kira asked. Pavia looked away, toward the two emptied bags of blood at her feet. Kira had nothing else to offer her.
“Do you still have time?” Now Kira looked away, down at her watch. Ever elusive, time was yet again slipping away from her. But she was so close to her mother, so close to knowing what kind of woman she was.
“Can’t you just transfer them to me? Like you were doing with Aldrich?”
“It doesn’t work that way with humans,” Pavia said, and this time Kira knew she sensed a bit of regret in her words. “You have to live the memories, experience them in real time. Your bodies aren’t strong enough.”
Kira looked at her watch again. A few minutes and her hour would be up. But if she didn’t do this now, who knew if she would ever find Pavia again?
Kira reached her hand under the cell and put all of her faith in Tristan’s ability to hold Aldrich at bay just a while longer. “Show me one memory,” Kira whispered, “the happiest one you can think of.”
Pavia nodded and gently brushed her fingers over Kira’s hand. Maybe because Kira knew she was going somewhere she was welcome, but the process didn’t feel like falling this time. As soon as Pavia’s skin touched Kira’s, her vision disappeared, and Kira felt as though she were flying. Her direction was clear. The colors swooshing by were comforting and not scary. When she sank into her mother's conscience, a warmth settled over her mind. This person was familiar—her mind worked like Kira’s and accepted Kira instantly. Kira fell softly into her mother’s memories…
When Kira opened her eyes, she was looking into a roaring fire. Natural flames burned in a hearth, dispersing a comforting smoky smell throughout a small living room. She was rocking back and forth, pushing her feet melodically against the ground to keep the baby girl asleep in her arms from waking up.
; She looked down at her daughter, at the mass of hair already sprouting wildly from her tiny head. Definitely from her father. But those big eyes, now shut in slumber, though normally wide and curious, were all hers.
The baby shifted in Kira’s arms, and her pudgy lips opened with a yawn before easing contentedly shut again. Her fingers, barely the size of a doll’s, were wrapped around a strand of Kira’s blonde hair, tugging it gently. But she didn’t mind the dull pain—it reminded her that the bundle in her arms was real and not just a dream.
A door behind her opened, letting a rush of cool air in as heavy boots stomped against the floor.
“Shh!” Kira sighed with an amused shake of her head. Her husband, Andrew, was many things, but quiet was not one of them.
“Is the baby asleep?” he asked, peeking into the peripheral of her vision.
“For now,” she whispered and watched him shrug off his heavy winter jacket to reveal a strong frame, one she knew would always keep their family safe. In the soft orange light of the fire, the grooves etched into his forehead seemed deeper. Barely in his mid-twenties and her husband already showed the stress of age. She ached to run her fingers over those lines, smoothing them out, ridding his face of worry just for one night.
As if sensing her thoughts, the baby stirred, reaching toward her father even in sleep. A barely visible string of light shot from her outstretched palm, hitting his chest. Even though her powers were weak, his features softened.
“Looks like Kira wants her daddy,” she whispered.
“Like mother like daughter.”
He smirked and walked closer to her. She rolled her eyes as he approached, but stood and carefully transferred the sleeping girl into her husband’s waiting arms. He sat by the fire, lying back, and placed their daughter on the flat expanse of his chest.
The Complete Midnight Fire Series Page 55