Blaze (22 page)

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 red-headed 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 further 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…

And 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 ache to empty, 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
raised, 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 in 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, towards 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 sunk into someone else’s conscious, Kira felt a warmth
settle 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.

“
Sh!” 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 towards 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,
laying back, and placed their daughter on the flat expanse of his
chest.

She sank to the floor, curling into a ball against
his side, putting an arm around both him and their daughter.

“
How did things go?” She asked quietly. Her
husband reached his hand up and ran it soothingly along her arm as
he kissed her forehead.

“
Not tonight,” he told her and looked at the
little girl clutching at the folds of his shirt. He sighed. “She’s
going to be beautiful, just like her mother.”

“
And a handful, just like her father,” she
teased.

“
Remind me to buy a shotgun when Kira turns
thirteen,” he mumbled as his eyes draped further and further shut.
She let the mix of his breath and the cackling fire lull her to
sleep, and kept her fingers on the small of her baby’s back,
letting her breath mirror the rise and fall of her little girl’s
body…

When Kira opened her eyes, she was back in
her own skin, in the starkly lit dungeon that shocked her eyes,
which had become attuned to the gentle firelight. Pavia’s hand slid
from hers and Kira ached to clutch it, to never let it go. She
didn’t care about Aldrich’s plan or saving the world. She wanted to
be back in the warmth of that small cabin, basking in the love so
clearly trapped within its walls.

“Please,” Kira softly begged. “Just one
more.” She shuffled her outstretched hand, looking through watery
eyes for the pale shape of Pavia’s hand. But Pavia leaned away from
Kira and sank back into her cell. “I’ll get you blood…I’ll give you
mine,” Kira said and started to pierce her own skin like some sort
of junkie.

“Kira,” a woman’s voice said. It wasn’t
Pavia, who was still mute and staring at Kira with a confused
expression. It was one of the female conduits. “You have a job to
do.”

“I don’t care,” Kira whispered. She had
given up Tristan to follow through with this plan, but giving up
her parents, the opportunity to know them—Kira couldn’t do
that.

“Yes you do,” Pavia said, turning her glance
on Kira, confusion gone. “How about a deal?” She shrugged,
embracing the care-free attitude again.