Simmer (26 page)

"Come on," Tristan tugged on her hand, "Luke
is meeting us outside. They're going to blow the house apart, we
need to leave now." Kira let him pull her along until they reached
the window.

The note would have to wait until she had
time alone. No matter what it was, neither Luke nor Tristan could
be involved, at least not yet. Kira knew exactly how powerful
Aldrich was and if she couldn't handle him, than neither could
they. She still wanted to find her mother, but if this night had
taught her anything, it was that sometimes patience was a virtue.
Not one Kira currently possessed, but one she needed to work
on.

Tristan slid through the window first,
preparing to catch her. But, right when Kira lifted her foot to
step over the windowsill, her eyes caught a strip of metal that
reflected her image back at her.

Stunned, Kira tripped over her own foot and
fell against the wooden floor. She looked around for a mirror and
saw a large metal plate hanging on the wall. She ran over to it,
ripping it from the wall and holding it in front of her face.

The boys had said her eyes were blue, but
Kira still wasn't prepared for what she saw. Where as before her
eyes had been a rusty orange in the center, leaking into a deep
olive green with flecks of yellow, they were now bright blue. Not a
turquoise or aqua or navy, but a bright cobalt blue that alarmed
her.

The perfect royal blue started at her pupils,
extending to almost the edge of her iris where a small ring of
red-yellow waves pushed their way in. Those looked like her flames,
fighting and struggling to stay with her, reminding her of her
fight and her power. But now she didn't recognize anything else or
any part of her when she looked in the mirror. Her new eyes changed
the entire look of her face, and she didn't like it.

Blue was for vampires. It was a color without
heat and without spark. Despite the saturated hue, there was no
life. Blue was the color of death; it was the pale grey that crept
along the body as blood slowly stopped pumping, the color of frost
as it covered a forest floor and stopped life in its tracks.

More than anything, Kira wondered what it
meant? What had happened to her in there that had so fundamentally
changed who she was? She didn't feel different, not really.

"Kira!" Tristan yelled from out the window.
She dropped the plate, suddenly jolted back to reality. But before
walking to the window, Kira couldn't resist pulling the note from
her pocket. Slowly, she unrolled the crinkled paper. In elegant,
loopy script were the words: "If you want to see your mother, visit
my castle any time. Kindly bring Tristan along." Written below was
an address in England.

Kira let her back fall against the wall while
she thought. Of course she would go. She had to now. Her mother
would never be living there willingly, not with someone so evil.
Something else was going on, Kira had to believe it.

And maybe it was a trap. Maybe Aldrich did
have plans for her like he had said, but what kind of person would
she be if she didn't go? Just because she feared him didn't mean
she wouldn't fight him.

Maybe something had changed within her —
maybe something had awakened inside of her. Regardless Kira knew
one thing: no more playing by other people's rules. She had gone to
Sonnyville because of the Council. She was stuck in that hotel room
for a week because of Luke and Tristan. She had been playing
referee between them and trying to keep everyone from being hurt.
But now, Kira was going to do what she wanted when she wanted to
and there would be no stopping her.

If her destiny was to turn into a mindless
killing machine, there was only one way she could think to stop it
— to do what she felt was right instead of driving herself insane
trying to please other people.

"Kira? What's wrong?" Tristan asked again and
jumped back up, poking his head through the window.

"Nothing," Kira said and stuffed the note
back in her shorts. Nothing at all was wrong. For tonight, everyone
was safe and she had gotten exactly what she wanted. Diana was dead
and her mother was alive.

Everything was exactly as it should be, which
was why Kira felt perfectly comfortable diving out the open window.
She knew Tristan was there to catch her. In his arms, Kira felt
safe, and he carried her away from the house, only putting her down
when they reached the edge of the forest. Kira peered through the
branches and searched for the tree she had sat on before.

When she found it, Luke was there waiting for
them both. She sat down next to him and Tristan sat down beside
her, sandwiching Kira between them.

"Are you okay?" Luke asked without turning to
look at her.

"I'm alive, aren't I?"

"That doesn't necessarily mean you're okay
though."

"I am," Kira sighed and tried to decide how
much to tell them both. "Aldrich never tried to hurt me, he really
just wanted to talk — about Tristan mostly but also about my
mother."

"You can't believe a word he says, Kira, you
can't trust him," Tristan urged.

"I know. He's gone anyway," she said,
"Aldrich vanished and any hope of finding my mother went with
him."

Kira stuck her hand in her pocket to feel the
slip of paper hidden there, thinking of the address he had written.
She might not be able to trust Aldrich, but she did believe that he
had her mother. The look in Diana's eyes at the end when she
confessed, when she was terrified to die and begging for her life,
that was what told Kira it was the truth. She would never forget
Diana's haunted expression — staring death in the face and knowing
it was too late to stop its approach. Kira could read in her eyes
that Diana knew it was her own fault, that if she had told the
truth Kira probably wouldn't have been able to gather the strength
to kill her. Aldrich was too smooth and too controlled to believe,
but Diana in those last minutes had been completely truthful.

Kira fingered the note again and decided to
keep quiet. The boys hadn't seen what she had seen: it would take
time for them to understand.

"How's it going in there?" Kira finally
asked, realizing that all three of them were just staring straight
ahead at the mansion. The windows were broken and glowing orange
from the conduit flames.

"We got about half of them, maybe fifteen
vampires, definitely more than I expected. They're draining the
blood right now, weakening all the vampires so we can transport
them to an interrogation house. And then," Luke said with a wide
smile, "we're blowing the place apart!"

Kira laughed at his enthusiasm. "The grand
entrance was your idea too, right?"

"That was pretty legit, you have to admit.
Breaking through the windows with flames a-flying — couldn't have
planned it any better."

"As one of the people thrown up against a
wall, I beg to differ," Tristan said from her other side.

"But the timing was perfect, you have to
admit," Kira said, giving Luke his victory.

"I know," Luke said with mounting excitement.
He started talking even faster, letting his hand gestures grow
slightly wild. "That blonde woman came in to warn them and Aldrich
was like, don't interrupt me you insignificant fool, and she was
like, but but, and then the conduits bust in like, too late —
you're all fools!"

"And the look on Bronson's face..." Kira
giggled, unable to continue talking.

"No Aldrich, he was the best. I swear he
looked like a little kid playing with a jack-in-the-box for the
first time — totally shocked and freaked out. It was great!"

"But Bronson," Kira challenged, "he was so
confused. I swear he was looking around like a fish out of water,
like 'conduits are not supposed to be here, they weren't
invited.'"

"I think it's safe to say he'll never be
hosting a red or white rose ball again," Tristan added.

"Yeah, well let's hope no one will," Kira
said, instantly feeling a little sorry for bringing the mood back
down.

"It's inevitable, though. Conduits and
vampires have been fighting for thousands of years. I don't know
what would ever stop it." Tristan shrugged. Us? Kira asked
silently, letting herself believe it could be true for a
moment.

The fire in the mansion died down and in the
moonlight Kira saw conduits carrying the lifeless bodies of drained
vampires out the windows.

"Won't be long now," Luke said quietly.

"And why again are we blowing up the house?"
Kira asked.

"Because Luke is a pyro-maniac," Tristan
responded with a grin.

"While that is totally true," Luke said, also
smiling, "it's just standard procedure, at least I think. This way
the vampire has to start over. They have no home or supplies to go
back to."

At the word home, Kira sighed and thought her
family in Charleston. When she got back she would make pancakes.
Chloe, Kira imagined, would come running into the kitchen because
of the aroma. Then Kira would turn on the coffee machine, lulling
her parents awake and dragging them out of bed to a fresh cooked
meal and caffeine. Just a normal Sunday morning for the Dawson
household, something that hadn't happened for a while and something
Kira desperately missed.

"I can't wait to get home. All I want is a
huge bowl of ice cream, a whole pint maybe. Sweet, creamy Ben and
Jerry's Super Chocolate Chunk," Kira said, salivating at the
thought.

"You're such a girl," Luke chided and leaned
back on his palms, thinking of his own family. "I just want a
home-cooked meal, some of my mother's warm and delicious beef stew.
Real meat for a real man."

"Oh God," Kira said and rolled her eyes. She
turned to Tristan, waiting for him to add something before
realizing why he remained silent. He was alone in the world except
for Kira. He didn't have anyone or anything to go home to.

"Look," he said instead and motioned to the
two last conduits coming out of the house.

They ran under the cover of night to the edge
of the forest, a few feet in front of Kira, Luke and Tristan. One
of the conduits pulled out the remote trigger and pressed a
button.

After a few completely silent seconds, as if
the entire forest were holding its breath, a corner of the house
exploded, engulfing the entire building in flames and sending
broken pieces everywhere.

Kira watched the wild movements of the
flames, felt the wave of heat hit her face, and heard the cackling
and crashing of wood as the uncontrollable fire consumed it. The
power inside of her responded, gathering in her heart and warming
her insides as if the two fires were friends trying to reconnect.
Her powers ached to be released, ached to join in on the chaos
before her, but she squelched it. Was she like the fire in front of
her? Wild and uncontrolled?

But the more she looked at the undulating
flames, swishing back and forth and lighting the night sky, the
more she saw the beauty in it, like the brilliant golden hues of
the flames and the soft glow permeating the yard.

Something had undoubtedly changed in her this
night. Like a switch flipped to the on position, her power churned
inside of her. But Kira didn't fear it. Killing Diana and breaking
through the immunity had given her a taste of her real potential.
The hot smoldering burn of her power was a comfort. She didn't fear
her strength. There was a purpose for it, something more than all
of the killing. She just wasn't sure what that was yet.

And, even though a little voice in the back
of her head told her that it was a bad idea, Kira knew Aldrich held
the answers. Her gut told her going to his home would solve all of
her problems. Finding her mother wasn't the end goal anymore,
finding the truth about herself was.

"Hotel?" Luke asked when the fire died down
to smoke and the house was charred beyond recognition.

"Hotel," Kira nodded.

"Hotel," Tristan agreed.

All three of them stood at the same time as
though tied together with a string. And maybe they were, Kira
thought, tied together for some inexplicable reason. She watched
the last spark of the fire, saw embers drift through the smoke like
fireflies, and waited for one of the boys to make a move.

Luke reached out his hand, tanned and
freckled, inviting her to follow him.

On her other side, Tristan reached out his
smooth white palm, asking her to move with him.

Kira stared for a moment, looking at the
choice before her, small and unimportant but at the same time
symbolic of so much more. She was stuck. Something that had seemed
so obvious a choice only days before was somehow difficult now. It
was almost as if she were two different people. And like she was
cut in half, Kira's hands acted on their own, each taking hold of
the hand before them.

On one side, she grasped a hand that was cool
and comfortable, a hand she had held a thousand times before, one
that enveloped hers and made her feel safe.

On the other side, she gripped a hand that
was warm and welcoming, a hand she had held before but never in
that way, never with excitement and a twinge of the unknown.

The night may have awakened more than just
her powers, Kira realized. She was taking charge of her life. She
wouldn't wait for the boys to come up with a plan. For the first
time, she stepped forward and pulled both of them behind her,
forcing them to follow her lead.

And at that moment, walking through the smoke
filled forest, all Kira wanted to think about was a hot shower and
a warm bed — no boys, no conduits, no parents, and no vampires.
Just one night to herself, completely free of worry, because the
fire inside her was heating up and, like that house, Kira knew she
was about to explode.

###

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