Chapter Eleven
Kira wanted to puke. Wait, her sleepy mind asked, do I want to puke or do I need to puke?
Her eyes weren't even open yet. All she knew was that Tristan still held her in his arms, she was still in bed, she could feel his breath a tantalizing millimeter from the back of her neck and she wanted to vomit.
Kira stirred, moving her muscles and waking Tristan in the process. He kissed the soft spot under her ear and whispered, "good morning," just loud enough for her to hear. Instinctively, Kira smiled and rolled over to look into his clear blue eyes.
"Morning," she said, still half-asleep.
Her gag reflex grew stronger. She wanted to smile and continue dozing in the peaceful confusion of waking up, but her stomach recoiled. Kira sat up and held her head. What was going on?
Tristan looked at her, concerned. She slipped her feet over the edge of the bed to put her head between her knees, but halfway bent over, she caught Luke's eyes — Luke's fuming eyes — and everything became clear.
"Luke!" She wanted to scream but it came out as more of painful groan as the vomit feeling started anew — at the exact moment Tristan's arm rested on her shoulders.
"Do you know what's wrong with her?" Tristan asked Luke, confused.
"Not a clue," Luke replied, but Kira heard the overly cheerful tone in his voice. She glared at him and tried to separate the gagging sensations in her mind from her bodily responses. Reading his mind could affect her physically now? This was so not cool. And, judging by the almost smirk gathering on Luke's face, he knew just what his thoughts were doing.
Kira tried to focus but she was still so tired that separating his thoughts from hers wasn't easy. Forcing herself to think happy thoughts, she slowly pushed the sick feeling to the back of her brain. But not fast enough, she thought still clutching her stomach. How dare Luke work mental sabotage on her! Okay, yes, she had sort of forgotten that he was sleeping in the bed next to her and Tristan. And yes, that probably frustrated him. But, it's not like they had been making out or anything. She had been asleep!
It was, Kira thought as the need to vomit slowly got replaced by the need to slap Luke across the cheek, time for him to pay.
"I'm going to kill you!" She shouted and bolted upright, charging him. Luke slid over to the other side of his bed and stood. Kira jumped on the bed and lunged for him, ready to wipe the grin off of his face. Luke easily evaded her and ran over toward the foot of the bed.
Not caring how ridiculous she looked, Kira raced after him. Luke dodged again and before Kira could make another attempt at a lunge, strong arms held her from behind.
"Let me go, Tristan," she said, struggling against his iron grip.
"As much as I would love to see you beat Luke up, I have to ask: what is going on?"
"Your girlfriend has officially gone insane," Luke said. His features were still alive with laughter at the game of cat and mouse he and Kira had just played.
Kira stopped struggling against Tristan, suddenly realizing what she had done. She would have to confess now and tell Tristan she could read Luke's mind. But, it would hurt him so much to know they had a connection like that. Maybe, Kira began to think of an idea...
"Luke gave me food poisoning."
"I did not," he said indignantly.
"Really? You're ready to bite his head off over food poisoning?" Tristan was highly doubtful.
"When it makes me want to throw up, I do! It must have been the snacks in the car." She added, trying to think on her feet, but it sounded lame even to her.
"This is all in your head, Kira," Luke said, trying to come off as serious. His attempt was undermined by barely contained laughter.
"All in my head? I don't think so," she jerked her arm again, hoping to surprise Tristan but he held her steady. "None of that was in my head." She stared pointedly into Luke's eyes. To think, when she first realized she could read his mind, she was worried he would think she would invade his privacy. Who was the one being completely ridiculous and unfair now?
Luke shrugged, "Then I'm sticking with my initial diagnosis — temporary insanity."
"Gah!" Kira breathed in frustration. "I'm going to the bathroom. Let me go," she said and Tristan's grip instantly fell.
"Women," she heard Luke say to Tristan as she walked off.
"Tell me about it," he responded.
Great, Kira thought, they both think I'm PMSing. She slammed the door behind her and splashed water on her face. Should she have told Tristan? It would have been the perfect moment to come clean about the mind reading. Now, if he found out, it would seem like Kira had been hiding it from him, like she had been keeping a secret. And what if Luke ever mentioned it? Kira didn't think he would ever go behind her back like that, but things had a way of coming out in the heat of the moment.
Trying to let it go, Kira brushed her teeth and mindlessly continued with her morning routine.
A few minutes later, she emerged from the bathroom, much calmer but still giving Luke the evil eye. Both boys sat in armchairs bent over a piece of paper resting on the low coffee table. Tristan eyed her with caution.
"I'm okay," she told them. She held her hands up. "I promise. No secret weapons or anything."
"Don't believe her," Luke said and leaned in towards Tristan. "I think I saw one of those poison dart guns in there earlier."
Kira rolled her eyes and ignored him.
"We were just talking strategy," Tristan said, steering the conversation away from any more bickering.
Kira tugged one leg underneath her bum and sat on the couch to look at the piece of paper. It was blank.
"I see you've been very successful," she said sarcastically.
"Well, it turns out neither of us found any useful information," Tristan sighed and dropped his forehead into his hands. "I know Diana was on her way here two days ago. She may have stopped in somewhere else first, but I know she was looking for someone or something in Baltimore. But, no one's seen her here yet. No vampires at least."
"Same here," Luke chimed in. "No conduits have seen her around."
"So where does that leave us?" Kira asked. Both boys remained silent, but shared a telling look. "No!" She looked at them with wide eyes.
"Just one more day," Tristan pleaded.
"No, you can't leave me behind again. That is totally unfair!"
"It's not because we don't want you to come," Tristan said while taking her hand, "it's because we can't afford to be under attack again. We got pushed out of Charleston and pushed out of Sonnyville. If the local vampire population gets wind that you're here, we might be pushed out before we can find Diana or any clues to her whereabouts."
"It will keep all of us safer," Luke added.
"Fine," Kira said while collapsing against the back of the couch, "but only for one more day. Deal?"
"Deal," they both agreed in unison.
"So where will you be going? So I can at least live vicariously," she said while grabbing one of the complimentary apples to munch on for breakfast.
"Tea," Tristan said looking sheepish. Kira stare at him under raised brows. "What? The head vampire here is five hundred years old. He couldn't give up his English ways if he tried."
"Can vampires even have tea?" Luke asked. Tristan glared at him.
"It's not tea, exactly..."
"Oh, right," Luke said while looking uncomfortably towards the floor. Maybe he didn't do that on purpose, Kira thought.
"Anyway, he said we had things to discuss in a wonderfully profound way. After I hear what he has to say, I'll do some digging around the city."
Kira nodded and turned to Luke.
"Ditto. The local conduits are going to show me their usual hotspots." He leaned back in his seat and put his feet on the table. Stretching his arms over his head with a yawn, he said, "The real question is what will you be doing? What I wouldn't give for a day off right now."
"I don't even know. Maybe take a bath?" Kira said, knowing she would really look at the papers her grandfather had given her. But, they were private and she didn't want to tell Luke or Tristan. If she was about to uncover some deep, dark secret about what she was, she wanted it to stay that way — a secret.
"In our four hundred dollar a night bathroom?" Luke asked with a smirk. Kira choked on an apple chunk.
"About that..."
Luke waved her off.
"Don't worry about it. I'm only kidding. I'll find a way to pay for food somehow."
"Luke," Kira said sternly, trying to see if the price actually mattered or not.
"No, really. I've heard that Baltimore has a thriving strip scene," he said, pretending to consider it. Kira tried to contain herself, but the image was too much to handle.
"I don't think you could pull off a thong."
Tristan covered his face so his grimace didn't show.
"Hey, I'll have you know," Luke started saying, but then he shook his head and burst out laughing. "Okay, okay, you got me. I do not even want to joke about that."
Kira smiled with success. She barely ever beat him at his own game.
"Are we done with that...forever?" Tristan asked from behind his hands.
Still chuckling, Kira said yes and got up to get dressed. Within twenty minutes, she had said goodbye to both of the boys and was alone in the hotel room deciding between reading those pages or some healthy procrastination. She opted for the latter and picked up her cell phone.
Her mom answered on the second ring. She sounded happy and, Kira thought, blissfully ignorant of what was going on in her daughter's life. She didn't want to talk about conduits or vampires or Kira's powers — that was all part of the life she had given up a long time ago. And though she told Kira she would always be there to talk, it was hardly true. If Kira needed to discuss boys or school or college or cooking her mother was there in a heartbeat. But about anything Kira actually needed to talk to someone about? No, she looked the other way.
They had found a happy peace since Kira had woken up from her coma. But it wasn't real, not the way it used to be before Kira had found out she was adopted. And maybe that was why she wanted to find her real mom so badly. She wanted a family who could accept her unconditionally. Her current mom refused to accept her powers, her father was ignorant of it all, and Kira knew if she mentioned Tristan to her grandparents, they would never understand.
Her real mother was someone who had given so much up for love. She just might understand what Kira needed to hear.
And that was why Kira finally picked up the papers after hanging up the phone. At first, she was going to call Emma, her boy guru, to talk about Luke. But she needed to face what she was. In the end, Kira hoped it would help her gain control.
Sighing, Kira walked over to her duffle and pulled out the wrinkled folder. She made a cup of chamomile tea from the hotel coffee pot and nestled into the armchair by the window to read. With one wistful glance at the harbor and sunny afternoon, Kira pulled the pages free and started reading, thankful that, like the book she had stolen from Luke, the text was written in modern English. Well, at least as modern as eighteenth century English, which for an ancient and secret civilization, was pretty well updated.
Months ago, Luke had explained to her that merely a year or two after printing in the early 1700s, the same conduit scholars, both Protector and Punisher, who had gathered under the anonymous title to write the histories down decided the knowledge was too dangerous for every conduit to have. Definitely a pre-freedom of speech move, Kira thought, but they had removed the final chapters and all the copies printed since — made as textbooks for young conduits to learn from — had simply never even mentioned the two missing chapters. Most people had forgotten about them, but Luke's copy, which she did eventually return, was one of the original texts: a family heirloom passed down through countless generations.
In Kira's hands were photocopies of the original missing pages. Something that, up until now, had remained only in the hands of the Council members.
"Chapter Four," she started reading, "A Mixed Breed."
"The story of how we began is perhaps the most controversial topic in our society's long and prolific history: the mixed breed. How did they act? What did they look like? Were they dangerous? What powers did they posses? What weaknesses? And most importantly, what would happen should they return?
"Answers, however, are the one thing we do not have. They are what we seek and what we need to find to secure the future of our people, but they are also the hardest things to come by. How do you search for information about a species that died out more than ten millennia ago — a time that predates written language itself?"
Kira could not help but gulp. She knew she was the first mixed blood conduit to come by in a long time, but 10,000 years? It was almost an impossibly long time to imagine.
"We can only look to myths, legends and, of course, history. What we've told you thus far are our theories about the evolution of our separate species. Almost ten thousand years ago, a time when pastoral civilization was only just beginning to arise, the species began to evolve apart. We of course believe that as families began to settle and discard the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, colonies of like-minded conduits formed. Because of this, the species stopped intermixing and new powers evolved, ones that reflected their like-minded souls. In our modern words, Protectors to protect what they believed were the lost souls inside of vampires, and Punishers to destroy what they believed was an inherent evil. Was our God involved? Perhaps. But in this text, we will discuss only science.
"Like vampires, conduits evolved beside humans, to look like humans, but we are not humans. We are genetically different: from mystical sources or from natural ones, we will probably never be certain, but what we can do is hard to describe without introducing divine magic into the equation. And that is more relative to ancient conduits than any of us could ever believe, for their powers, according to legend, were limitless. Myths of many ancient civilizations discuss fire bringers — modern tales have turned us into ludicrous creations like fire-breathing dragons — but ancient texts do mention myths of human-like beings capable of spinning fire. For a long time, we believed these words were about our current species, but now we must fearfully turn to these myths for answers. Fearfully because in the times these ancient legends look back on both conduits and vampires were the evils in the stories. In a word, they were mad."
Maybe this wasn't such a great idea, Kira thought while looking away from the pages and down at the active harbor outside of her window. If the species spent 10,000 years evolving apart, how did her parents manage to have a child anyway? And what was to say she wasn't just a new breed entirely, something completely different than the ancients were? The whole idea that a book written two hundred and fifty years ago held all of her secrets was ridiculous. No one had answers. The only thing she saw here that called out to her was the word magic, because that was the only way to explain her life.
Even knowing it could all be false, Kira's eyes fell back onto the text. Ever curious, she needed to know more. She needed to be prepared to face whatever she really was.
"Unlike us, the ancient ones were ruled by their powers. Though hard to believe, it is said that they lacked control, that sometimes a conduit would go blind in rage, spouting flames for days on end with no stop until death finally took them. In these legends, they did not burn vampires alone. Myth says when an ancient one lost control, entire villages would be burnt to ash. Entire families killed. Animals charred beyond recognition. It is because of these legends that we now strive for control.
"Vampires are evil because they give in to carnal instincts. When the hunger strikes, they go on a killing rampage, brought completely out of humanity's grip in blood lust.
"What are conduits if not controlled? If we killed everything we touched, we would be just as evil as the very things we were born to fight. We believe that at first this unconscious need for control helped split the two species. Now, we consciously strive to keep it that way. Because we are always asking, what if a half-breed returned? Would humans be more at risk from it or from the vampires?
"And, even though Protectors will kill a vampire when they must, if the time came could any of us, Protector or Punisher, murder one of our own?"
Kira let her head fall against the back of the seat. She stared up at the rippled white ceiling seeing only flames and screaming people, running not from vampires but from her.
But, she had never lost control like that — never so badly that anything but vampires were affected.
Suddenly, Kira thought of Luke. Had he been right? Was he the only reason she had never fallen so deep and had never lost so much control? If he hadn't been there in Sonnyville to bring her out of her delirium, would she have turned the entire village and every conduit to dust, just like the vampires?
For the past few months, Kira had only ever thought that conduits had her capture to fear: that if vampires caught her they would be immune and they could go on a killing spree. But, that wasn't really why conduits weren't allowed to interbreed. Every Council for the past three hundred years had been keeping their entire society's biggest fear a secret: the fear that one of their own might be the greatest danger in the world, that one of their own might be a monster.
The only thing Kira didn't understand was why would they hide this? If every conduit knew this, they would never risk mixing blood. Her parents would have probably stayed away from each other.
The healing, Kira thought. The scholars must have written about her powers of healing. It was the one thing that made her existence good, the one thing conduits might risk madness for. After all, Kira had risked it to save Luke not so long ago.
Kira skimmed through the following pages, skipping past the countless myths all describing the same thing: the ancient ones' insatiable power and fall into madness.
She was almost about to stop reading, haunted enough by what she had learned, when she came across a change in tone.
"While we would love to remain with these ancient myths of horror, we feel honor bound as men of academics to produce the other side of the story. Fearful as they were through the stories we have just now told, all conduits throughout history have been things of light. Our powers are that of God and goodness, and while madness might be our undoing, our powers give us strength.
"With this in mind, we must admit that all of our findings have not been full of blood and horror. We believe with every ounce of our combined beings that bringing a new mixed breed into the world would mean the end of life as we know it, but stories do tell of ancient fire bringers capable of restoring life. They could, we believe, heal humans and conduits alike as long as they kept the madness at bay.
"And while we were not sure if we would write these words, we almost believe that a mixed blood conduit today might be able to hone this power. When we think back to the lives of the ancient ones, we must remember that the world was a different place. There were no rules, no governments and no notion of civility. There was food, killing for food and staying alive no matter the cost.
"If a mixed breed were born today, in a society governed by control and regulation, there is no telling what may occur — no telling if the conduit would be a mad man or a savior. But knowing what we do, we wholeheartedly agree that finding out is not worth the risk."
Kira looked at the name of the next and final chapter — The Prophecies — and realized she didn't really want to hear anymore about how her life meant the end of the world. A prophecy was a rigid proclamation, an unchangeable destiny, and she didn't want to feel like her life story had already been written for her.
Instead, Kira slipped into a jean skirt and flip-flops to wander around in the busy harbor below. She tied her hair in a ponytail, put on her oversized sunglasses and donned baseball cap — if that wasn't camouflage, she didn't know what was. Her hair and eyes were covered and no vampire would have any idea who or what she was, or at least Kira hoped not because she had to get out of that hotel room.
Of course, sitting on a bench and basking in the sun still didn't do very much to appease her thoughts. Without Tristan or Luke around to distract her, Kira was pulled right back into dark territory the minute she sat down. The beautiful weather helped a little, but the sun didn't have its usual effect of calming her. Rather, as Kira let it soak into her skin, she couldn't help but feel dangerous with the power.
The mind reading or whatever crazy psychic connection she shared with Luke was still a mystery, however. It was the one thing Kira held onto because it was the one concrete thing she had that made her different than the ancient ones with their uncontrollable powers.
She had felt dangerous at times, almost insane. She had also felt unstoppable at times, especially when she healed someone or something. But, according to myth so had all the other conduits thousands of years ago. But the connection she and Luke shared was an unknown, the one thing that might just help her hold on to her humanity.
Kira shifted on the otherwise empty bench and stretched out. As she turned to the side to lift her feet onto the wooden planks, a mass of long, straight, glistening black hair caught her attention.
Kira sat taller in the seat, stretching to see the woman who looked almost familiar. Her skin gleamed white in the sunlight. Her frame was long and lean, almost absent of fat, and she wore a loosely flowing dress in a deep plum color. Tendrils of fabric blew in the breeze, creating a fluid train down the back of the dress. It was low-cut to show the pale curve of a skinny back.
Slowly, as if searching for someone, the woman turned around. The pointed curve of her nose and taut lips came into view, but all Kira could see were her icy blue, piercing eyes: Diana.