Blaze (6 page)

“A very rugged and manly cute,” Kira said,
taking hold of his hand and pulling him closer.

“You can’t distract me with a kiss. This is
very serious.”

Kira nodded in agreement, but slid her arms
up his chest and around his neck before lifting on her tippy toes
to bring her face almost eye level to his.

“I refuse to be seduced right now,” Tristan
said, looking away from her, “I’m supposed to be the one who does
the seducing.”

Kira continued to play with the little hairs
at the base of his neck, moving her face slowly closer to his but
waiting for him to make the final move.

He turned his face back to her and Kira
could see his resistance fading away. The moment hung between them
and a stillness rested in the air. But an instant later, Kira’s
lips curved into a smile because Tristan gave in. His eyes clouded
over and his face sank closer, until they were finally kissing.

A sudden whoosh of air made Kira pull away
from Tristan and she realized the pod had opened. They had reached
the end of their half hour ride and the same suspicious employee
from before was waving them toward the exit.

Kira ran to the bathroom, leaving Tristan
alone to decide where their next stop should be. Had she been with
Luke, Kira was almost certain they would be headed for Madame
Tussauds, the famous wax figure museum. She could easily imagine an
afternoon spent making funny faces next to celebrity figures and
posing for pictures. Next, Luke would drag to her the famous
Queen’s Guards and he would tell jokes, swearing he could make one
of the them break face and laugh.

With Tristan, something slightly more mature
would probably be involved. He would want to see some paintings for
sure, maybe visit the palace. But he had seen all of the city
before, so Kira wasn’t totally sure what he would decide, which was
why she was floored by his choice.

“You want to go to a park?” Kira asked when
Tristan said he thought they should spend the rest of the slowly
fading afternoon in Hyde Park, the biggest park in London and one
of the biggest urban parks in the world.

“Just trust me,” he said. Kira shrugged and
followed Tristan back to the rental car. He drove through the
streets, taking the scenic route to show her Buckingham Palace up
close, before pulling over and parking street-side next to the
park.

Tristan led her past lawns of crisp green
grass, bright and healthy from London’s frequent rains. Further in
the distance, Kira spotted a large, sparkling lake speckled with
rowboats. For a moment, Kira thought that was their destination,
but Tristan turned right instead of left, leaving the water behind
them. They walked under a canopy of vines, a romantic enclave free
of watching eyes, but Tristan didn’t pause to steal a kiss like he
normally would.

Eventually, his steps slowed as they neared
a row of emerald hedges. This is what he wanted to show me? Kira
asked herself, eyeing the small wooden gate Tristan had just opened
for her. But his face read of anticipation—slightly wide eyes
brimming with excitement and a knowing smile ready to spread even
larger at her response.

Looking at him strangely, Kira stepped
through the gate and gasped.

“Gorgeous, right?” Tristan whispered into
her ear, but Kira was speechless.

For a moment, Kira thought she had left
reality and had instead stepped into the pages of
The Secret
Garden
. All she could see were roses—everywhere she looked,
there were fully-bloomed roses of every color she could imagine:
red roses lining the path, yellow buds extending over them, pink
floral twining high into the hedges and almost hiding the sky. And
the smell, the smell was unbelievable. A sweet, almost vanilla
scent filled her senses, enticing Kira further and further into the
garden towards a cascading fountain in the center of the
pathway.

“Tristan, this place is beautiful,” Kira
sighed, taking his hand and pulling him down to sit next to her on
the edge of the stone fountain.

“I got something for you,” he said while
reaching into his pocket.

“When?”

“While you were in the bathroom.” He smirked
and she rolled her eyes. Kira had heard too many times before—from
both Luke and Tristan—that she took forever in the bathroom.

He opened his palm to reveal a keychain with
a cartoon drawing of the London Eye. Kira took it and flipped it
over to reveal a photo of her and Tristan on the other side. The
picture was of the two of them in the pod, heads close and eyes
locked on one another, with Parliament in the background. Kira
realized it must have been taken moments before they started
kissing, but the timing of the photograph was perfect.

Kira shifted over on the rock so she could
lie down and put her head on Tristan’s lap. He ran his fingers
through her hair, splashing it over his legs, and Kira looked up at
the sky enjoying his touch. She lifted the keychain up to glance at
it again, taking a moment to study the image.

Peter Pan, she thought silently to herself
while noting the image of Big Ben in the background, the boy who
didn’t want to grow up. Was it better to not want to grow up or to
not be able to grow up? For Tristan, immortality felt like a trap,
keeping them apart and keeping him alone in the world. More than
anything, he wanted to be human again and wanted to erase the many
years he struggled to cope with what he was.

For Kira, growing up seemed like the trap.
She didn’t want the responsibilities that came with it—learning to
control her powers, being thrown into the conduit world against her
will, and making life or death decisions no teenager should have to
make.

Regardless of Tristan and Luke, there were
decisions Kira needed to make about her future, decisions that
seemed to haunt her as time slipped away. Could she give up life
with the conduits like her adoptive mother had? She would be able
to pursue her dreams of being a chef and she could have a somewhat
normal life. But how did Luke fit into that plan? Giving up the
conduits would mean giving him up as well.

But if she chose the conduit lifestyle of
fighting vampires and wielding her powers, any semblance of normal
in her life would vanish and Tristan would probably vanish right
along with it.

Kira was at a crossroads in her life: two
paths both equally enchanting and equally foreboding in nature. But
right now, there was only one path and that was the road to
Aldrich’s castle.

Kira sat up and Tristan nodded, thinking the
same thing as her.

“Aldrich’s?” Kira asked.

“Aldrich’s,” Tristan confirmed.

Kira gulped, unable to stop the growing
sense that everything in her world was about to change.

Chapter Four

Really, no street lamps? Kira thought as
Tristan continued driving along the dark, winding English road.
They had been driving for just under two hours and the further they
got from London, the more deserted the streets had become. Large,
well-lit roads were replaced with narrow, country lanes.
Occasionally Kira saw the windows of a house gleaming through the
fog, but it had been well over twenty minutes since she had seen
any sign of life.

“Not to sound like a bored two-year-old, but
are we there yet?” Kira asked while wrapping her arms tightly
around herself. These silent streets were giving her the
heebie-jeebies. Even Aldrich’s castle seemed like an oasis compared
to this dank landscape that lacked even the sparse light of the
moon.

“About ten or fifteen minutes away I think,”
Tristan told her before turning from the road to focus his eyes on
her. “Do you remember what I told you?”

Kira rolled her eyes. “Yes, Aldrich is not
to be trusted. He’s evil and will say or do anything to get what he
wants.” It was all he had been telling her for the entire car ride.
As soon as the two of them stepped out of the rose garden, Tristan
had been strictly business.

“Right,” he said with a sturdy nod.

“Can I ask you a question?” Kira paused for
a moment, not really waiting for his permission but waiting to
gather her thoughts. “Do you think it’s possible that he really
might have my mother? That in twenty minutes I might actually meet
her for the first time I can remember?” She gulped, trying to
swallow her nerves. Even Kira couldn’t believe the idea—it was too
good to be true that her mother might just be waiting for her,
living and breathing, even if she was doing it in the castle
dungeon.

Tristan grabbed her hand. “I want to believe
it.”

“But you don’t,” Kira finished the thought
for him, “not really.”

“I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, I
just want you to be prepared. I know Aldrich—he is the cruelest man
I’ve ever known. I just don’t see why he would have kept her
alive.”

“For her blood?” Kira asked dubiously,
thinking the answer completely obvious.

“Not for this long, not for almost eighteen
years.” Tristan shook his head, trying to reason it out internally.
“No one could survive being a blood donor for that long—it drains
your body way too much.”

“And if he wasn’t using her for blood…” Kira
said slowly, trying to understand.

“Why would she still be around?” Tristan
filled the silence with the question Kira didn’t want to think
about.

“But it doesn’t make sense,” Kira said,
running a hand through her messy hair in frustration. She could
feel her body heating up, getting angry, losing control as always.
The slight pain of breaking through the knots in her curls actually
helped ground her to the car—the sting pricked her back into
reality.

“What doesn’t?” Tristan asked, looking at
her warily. Kira realized he probably felt the burn of her powers
heating her hands and hastily slid her fingers from his grasp. He
held tight, not letting her slip away.

“Making us come to England doesn’t make
sense unless he has my mother. If he wanted me, he could have taken
me from the ball. I was locked in a room with him—if he wanted to
kill me or kidnap me, I wouldn’t have been able to stop him.” Kira
thought back to that night, easily recalling the fear that struck
her senses when Aldrich sidestepped her powers, using his
telekinesis to swat her arms and flames away. He could have knocked
her out if he had wanted to. He could have made the ceiling fall on
top of her and kill her if he had wanted to.

“And if Aldrich wanted to find you,” Kira
spoke up, thinking aloud so Tristan could follow her argument,
“well, he did. And all he would have had to do was take me, and you
would have followed him back here anyway. Why the ruse if my mother
isn’t really alive? Why did we need to come here of our own free
will?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t trust him. He
doesn’t have an ounce of goodwill in his body.”

“I know that, but I also know there is
something in this house he wants us to see, and I just hope that
it’s my mother.”

At that, almost as if on cue, Tristan turned
down a straight driveway leading to a small square of light on the
horizon. As they drifted closer, Kira realized the small square was
really a menacing stone castle, half drenched in light and half
drenched in shadow. Two giant columns joined together by a flat
wall of stone lined with windows formed the front of the castle. In
the middle, two glass lanterns hung on either side of the main
door—a massive wooden slab that opened down the center. The windows
around the door glimmered with light. As they drove even closer,
Kira could see shadows dance across thin curtains. Distantly, she
wondered if they were human.

To the left of the main house—the area that
stole Kira’s attention—were ruins. Stones crumbled into piles, old
pillars of the original house stood tall but without floors or a
ceiling to keep them stable. All the windows were empty holes and
grass shrubs had invaded all of the cracks in the stones. Vines
climbed up the steep walls, grasping at open crevices, reaching up
the walls like arms clawing out of a grave. The deep opaque shadows
that curled around the stones were so dense that Kira could see the
skeleton of the remains but couldn’t see what lurked behind the
façade.

Kira gripped Tristan’s hand a little
tighter, hoping she would never have to venture into that area of
the home. He squeezed, as if sensing her hesitation, and brought
the car to a stop. Before either of them could move, the door
opened and a brilliant ray of light pierced the driveway, sending
the shadows away.

Aldrich.

Even though his features were silhouetted by
the bright lights of the house, Kira knew it was him. His tall thin
frame, short light brown hair and eyes of a deep midnight blue, so
dark they were almost black—Kira could see it all in her mind even
if the shadowed figure before her were a mystery.

“Ready?” Tristan asked. Kira sucked some air
in before nodding. Slowly, she reached for the latch and let the
door pop open. Unhooking her hand from Tristan’s, Kira stood and
faced Aldrich on her own.

“Kira,” a man’s voice called. It was
slightly higher in octave than she remembered, but the pompous,
highbrow lilt of the words was familiar. “I’m so glad you accepted
my invitation. And Tristan,” he turned, shifting slightly so the
side of his face was no longer shrouded in blackness, “welcome
home.”

“This was never my home,” Tristan responded
coldly.

“Technicality,” Aldrich replied with a
shrug. Tristan started to turn away, reaching back into the car for
their things, but the door shut on its own, slamming firmly closed
with a bang. “My servants will take your things to your room. Come
inside. Let me show you around.” He swept his arm in a wide arc
towards the door and disappeared into the house.

Without giving Tristan the time to even
think about grabbing her and making a run for it, Kira followed
Aldrich inside. Tristan appeared next to her in the door a second
later, holding her protectively around the waist. They were in this
together, for good or for bad.