Scorch (11 page)

"Here?" Kira asked.

Luke shrugged and stepped forward warily.
They walked down the well-lit path for about fifteen feet before
reaching the door to the restaurant. Luke stepped in first and Kira
followed, but they were immediately stopped by a hostess.

"Good evening," she said, taking in their
relaxed attire, "do you have a reservation?"

"Um," Kira said, looking around for
Pavia.

"Yes, Pavia? There should be a party
waiting," Luke chimed in.

"Ah yes, in the private room. Follow me,
please."

She stepped out from behind the podium and
Kira fought to keep up with her speedy steps. The entire restaurant
was low-lit with candlelight, and crisp white linens topped the
tables. Paintings hung from the cream walls and almost every diner
sparkled with diamonds.

Kira thought of her jeans. Yeah, she and Luke
weren't exactly the right clientele.

"Right in here," the hostess said and slipped
a hidden door open, leading to a long table completely full aside
from two empty seats on the opposite side of the room.

"Kira, Luke," Pavia said, standing and
shooing the hostess away, "so glad you made it."

Kira was too distracted by the pale faces
around her to answer. Maybe Luke had been right…they were
completely outnumbered.

"Sit, sit," Pavia continued, pointing toward
the two open seats. Kira noticed that two plates of food were
waiting for them…the only two plates of food on the entire table.
In fact, the only other things on the table were ten glasses of red
wine, or what Kira was pretending was red wine. But when she sat
down and smelled what had to be filet mignon on top of a bed of
rosemary mashed potatoes, she tried to calm down.

Luke, however, eagerly grabbed his fork
completely ready to dig in. So much for his concern, Kira
thought.

"So, thank you all for coming." Pavia was
still standing at the head of the table, looking around at all of
her guests. Her formality was making Kira slightly
uncomfortable—what was she nervous about? "You all know why we're
here, because of her," Pavia pointed at Kira, and every head
turned, "because Kira has restored a vampire's humanity and she
says she can do it again."

"For the price of one war," the hawk-nose
male vampire three seats away from Kira said.

"Alessandro, really," Pavia brushed him off,
her blasé attitude returning, "it'll be one battle that we'll win
without breaking a sweat. I've heard Aldrich's looking a little
crispy lately, if you know what I mean."

The vampires snickered. Kira and Luke looked
at each other and shrugged. Crispy?

"His power was of the mind, not the body,"
Hawk-Nose pressed again.

"Before we get to that part, I want to see
some proof," a female vampire spoke from opposite Hawk-Nose.

"I would as well," another vampire farther
away from Kira seconded, "was she not supposed to bring
Tristan?"

"Change of plans," Pavia said, moving back to
her seat on the other side of Kira. "Will everyone join hands so I
can share the memory with all of you at the same time? And before
you ask, no, I can't see into multiple minds at once so you'll all
block each other out."

Kira grabbed Luke's outstretched hand,
watching as he winced and took the strong grip of the female
vampire sitting next to him. She braced herself. This wasn't the
first time Kira had seen a memory from Pavia and getting sucked
into someone's mind wasn't exactly a pleasant experience.

Turning to her left, Kira looked Pavia in the
eye. There was something fragile in her stare, something vulnerable
that she probably didn't want Kira to see.

"This is a memory of my own," Pavia said,
stopping her hand an inch above Kira's, "from the night that
Tristan turned."

Opening her eyes in surprise, Kira tried to
speak, but it was too late. Pavia's fingers touched Kira, and she
was falling. Her chair tipped backwards, sending her into a
spinning vortex, an endless hole. Her feet seemed to flip over her
head, colors swirled in her mind, noises wracked her ears, but none
of it was decipherable. Until the pull of gravity nudged her and
she slammed back to earth in body not her own…

She was running, faster than she had run in
fifty years, farther than the tiny space that horrible glass shell
had allowed. She felt free, freer than she maybe ever had before.
Captivity was soul crushing and the weight had been lifted from her
shoulders. She felt as though she could fly, as though her feet,
already pumping at an inhuman speed, would eventually lift free of
the ground and propel her forward based on will alone.

The house was disappearing behind her,
glowing from flames dancing through the windows, hopefully
engulfing Aldrich whole.

That evil man.

He would pay, he was paying, even if it
wasn't her revenge, the idea was still sweet on her lips. A sugary
flavor making her hunger grow.

She needed to find a human. Now.

Refusing to stop running, she peered through
the dark air, hoping for a lick of light to guide her way toward a
house, but the landscape was quiet except for the flames still
cackling in her ears.

But she wouldn't go back there. Not ever. Not
for anyone.

The conduits had set her free and had let her
go, a double escape, one she couldn't tempt. Not even for—

A scream pierced the night.

She stopped.

She recognized that scream.

Kira.

Kira screaming as though her life was being
ripped from her body, which meant one thing—Aldrich was
escaping.

Hesitating for a second, she spun on her
heels. Aldrich had to pay.

The house was almost dark, smelling of burnt
flesh and sunlight and a sweet delicious blood that teased her. She
let her senses pull her onwards, since the fire from before had
died out. The fire she had been sure Aldrich would burn in.

As the house enlarged, she slowed down. She
could smell them, the conduits all still in the house, waiting for
instruction. But still, they were all still, so Kira couldn't be
dying. But she was whimpering, her cries sounded softly through the
night.

There was a window up ahead.

She moved quietly closer, hiding in the
darkness she had missed, peering through the house toward the
commotion.

There was Kira. She was kneeling on the
ground, her hand stopped above a body of charred flesh, tears
streaking down her face as her eyes grew wider and wider.

Aldrich. It had to be.

But what was Kira doing? Was she prolonging
the kill? Do it. Faster. Just make sure he's gone.

And then flames appeared from Kira's palm,
sinking slowly into the flaking burnt skin of the vampire at her
knees.

Go, go, she thought, urging Kira on with her
silent prayers. It would be a slow death, a painful one just like
he deserved. His skin was darkening, melting off, sinking to the
ground, but wait. What?

His hand.

She stared at his hand. Could it be?

The skin was flaking off, burnt petals fell
to the ground, landing into dust. But in their place was pink
flesh, new, unscarred, unbroken, and thrumming with life.

Kill him, she wanted to scream. But the
bright fresh skin spread farther, up his arm, from his toes to his
thigh, revealing naked, baby-silk skin. Until finally his face
appeared—chiseled cheek bones that led to inviting lips almost
smirked in a smile. He was beautiful.

He was most definitely not Aldrich.

Hair grew from his scalp, black as night,
framing eyes that remained closed.

Closed.

Until he sat up, opening new eyes, new brown
eyes, or old maybe.

And then she fell back, back, back…

Kira jerked in her chair, almost expecting to
land against the cold dirt of the English countryside. Pavia had
come back that night? She wanted Aldrich dead so much that she
returned to finish the job herself? And maybe, just maybe, part of
her had come back to make sure Kira was still alive, that Aldrich
hadn't won.

But she had called Tristan beautiful, and
what was that feeling that came with her thoughts, something almost
warm despite the cold nature of her body.

A fist twisted in Kira's stomach. What—

"So now you've seen it," Pavia said weakly as
she slipped her hand from Kira's and coughed under her breath. "I
saw him change with my own two eyes, and now you've all seen it
too."

"That was," Hawk-Nose licked his lips,
turning toward Kira with a calculating grin, "can you do it
again?"

Nine other pale faces turned toward her, and
even Luke couldn't seem to avert his gaze.

This is it, Kira thought, the moment of
truth. Well, not truth, the moment of amazing fib. The truth was,
she had no idea. For all Kira knew, she was turning into a vampire,
falling into a pit of darkness so deep that no amount of sunlight
could save her. For all she knew, her flames could barely burn a
vampire, let alone bring one back from the dead. For all she
knew…

"Yes, I can definitely do it again," Kira
said, oozing confidence, "but for a price."

Aldrich had to die.

End of story.

"Your war?" Hawk-Nose spoke up again. Kira
nodded. Her war.

"And what exactly is it that you want?" A new
vampire asked, one who exuded age and wisdom despite his young,
brawny appearance.

"Aldrich has threatened not only me, but my
friends and family, and he needs to be stopped. We have to kill
him."

"And why do you need our help?"

"Because I don't think he's acting alone this
time. He tried it before and almost got destroyed. This time he
coming with reinforcements—"

"Reinforcements who, I might add, we'll need
to kill anyway," Pavia interjected. "It's not like the vampire
community is really on board with us trying to go backwards. We
need to show that no one can stop us from becoming human
again."

"So we need to find out his plan?" The woman
next to Luke asked. He leaned closer to Kira with a slightly green
tone to his face.

"Yes, one of you will need to act as a spy to
find out what he's up to," Kira affirmed, looking around at the
iron faces. "Once we know his plan, we can make our own."

"Any volunteers?" Luke asked, trying to
smother his grin when no one jumped for the honor. Kira rolled her
eyes and squeezed his knee under the table. That was not
helping…

"I will do it," Hawk-Nose said. "But assuming
I can infiltrate his group and learn his plan, what assurance do we
have that you will follow-through? Can you kill him?"

"Yes," Kira said, her voice like ice.

"You've let him go twice before."

"Third time's a charm, right?" No one looked
convinced. So Kira swallowed her pride.

He was right, no matter how you looked at it,
her track record was bad. The first time, Aldrich had slipped right
out of a window at the Red Rose Ball, teasing her with the idea of
her mother. But the second time, that was entirely Kira's fault.
She let him go to save herself—not to save Tristan, who she hadn't
even realized was burning, but to save herself from giving into the
evil lurking inside of her.

Was will power enough to keep her sane long
enough to kill him this time?

"I'll admit it, alright, Aldrich didn't
mysteriously escape in England, I let him go," there was a sharp
inhale around the room, "I let him go because I felt Tristan
dying," Kira refused to look at Luke, at the confused judgment in
his fiery irises, "I felt him burning within my flames, and decided
it wasn't worth sacrificing his life to end Aldrich's. And even so,
I nearly lost him. But with you fighting with me, that won't
happen. I can end him—easily."

"Then I will fight with you," Hawk-Nose
said.

From the corner of her vision, Kira saw
Pavia's lips twitch. Her eyes began to glow a soft royal blue, a
satisfied hue.

"I'm in too," Pavia said while reaching for
her glass, "obviously I want a little payback."

The woman beside Luke was next, and then the
man next to her joined them. The soft-spoken man across the table
from Kira agreed, and within minutes, every vampire in the room had
pledged their allegiance—verbally and truthfully. The funny thing
about vampires was you could always call a lie, their eyes said it
all. And right then, ten pairs of very bright, very icy blue eyes
glowed with life all around the table.

In fact, the only set of eyes looking pissed
off rather than excited were the flaming green ones next to
Kira—the ones staring her down, reading every lying blush on her
face. He knew something was up, that there was something she hadn't
told him, something she was hiding from everyone around the
table.

But Kira ignored him, because she had her
army.

"Why?" Luke asked. Kira kicked him under the
table. What are you doing, she thought, be quiet.

He scooted his chair an inch away from
her.

"Why are you all so eager to fight him, to be
human?"

"You could never understand," the vampire
next to Luke said softly, eyeing him wearily.

"You're right, I don't. I've spent my whole
life trying to protect humans from you people, and now instead of
killing them to want to become one?"

"Perhaps I'm tired of all the killing," she
said, a sad smile passed over her lips, "but then again, perhaps
I'm tired of not caring that a killer is what I've become."

Luke opened his mouth, ready to push forward,
his eyes narrowing with suspicion.

"Alright then," Pavia said, jumping out of
her seat to stop the conversation before it went any further.
"Kira, Luke, why don’t you crazy conduits get home. I'll walk you
out."

Pavia started for the door and Kira grabbed
Luke, practically pulling him out of his seat. She didn't say a
word until they were outside in the fresh air.