Chapter Eight
The car ride back was tense. Tristan and Kira had waited for what seemed like hours for Luke to pick them up. When the jet-black car careened around the bend, they jumped in and Kira blurted out her fear that the vampires were moving in on Sonnyville. Almost immediately, Luke pushed the pedal down to speed through the mostly deserted roads that led back home.
Luke tried to calm her. Vanessa and Casey did too. Sonnyville was prepared. The town had incredible defenses. All the inhabitants, even the children, knew how to fend for themselves. But then why was Luke driving so fast and why was there a slight shake to his voice? No one, not even vampires, was stupid enough to attack an impenetrable town. They had to have something, some tool or idea that the conduits didn't know about.
Kira looked out the window, but all she saw was her grandmother's soft and caring eyes, crinkled on the side from years of smiling. A blink and her grandfather appeared, hard as rock and stoic but still her family. Another blink and Kayla, the little girl who reminded her so much of her sister, was laughing and shooting sparks of fire with the other children.
They had to be okay.
Thoughts of vampires running through people's homes, stealing and killing children were hard to keep at bay. And these were Protectors; they couldn't kill the vampires with their powers. But maybe Kira was underestimating them. They had to have lethal defenses for this exact reason.
Without warning, Luke slammed on the breaks, which screeched in protest as the tires smoked against the pavement.
"Tristan, jump out now!" He screamed while the car swerved uncontrollably towards the front gate of Sonnyville. Knowing from the tone of Luke's voice not to question him, Tristan opened the door and leapt from the car in less than second. Kira was about to yell at Luke for kicking him out when the car careened through the open gate.
An overwhelming sense of heat and calm passed through her body, making her nerves tingle in the same way as when she absorbed another conduit's power. She filled to the brim with sunlight, letting it warm her senses and heal any wounds she may have. A brilliant smile lit up her features and she looked over at Vanessa to see the same reaction. Her hair stood on its tips, static from the sudden rush of energy.
As quick as it had come, the heat evaporated and the car jolted to a halt, leaving Kira confused more than anything else.
"What was that?" She asked to no one in particular.
"That was what kills any vampires who try to enter Sonnyville. It wasn't on the last time you came through the front gate, but hopefully this means the town got wind of an attack," Luke told her. His hands gripped the wheel tightly and Kira saw his eyes were wide and shell-shocked, probably from the almost car crash.
"But, what is it?" Kira asked. It had felt like the sun but one hundred times closer and more wonderful.
"It's a UV wall," Casey said. Kira was happy to hear her speak up, even if it was only for business talk. "We've managed to trap sunlight and release it on command to create an invisible wall made of potent UV rays. It's one of the reasons our town is usually ten degrees warmer than everywhere else. But more importantly for us, any vampire who tries to walk through will get incinerated."
"Hence," Luke shrugged in the general direction of where Tristan stood just beyond the open wrought iron doors. Kira raced out of the car and back to the gate. She reached out a hand, feeling for the heat. The instant her fingertips touched scorching air, she jumped forward, passing through the wall and again feeling the boost of energy fill her senses.
Tristan caught her when she landed and stumbled forward on the other side.
"As much as I love jumping from moving vehicles..." Tristan grinned and Kira flashed back to the night on the pick-up truck when he saved her by leaping off the truck and onto a vampire. "What just happened?"
"There's a wall made of UV radiation around the entire town."
"Ah, well that complicates things just a bit." Kira smiled at his smirk. "Any way I can jump over it with a running leap?"
Kira shook her head. "I don't think so."
"So you guys get to have all the fun battling it out inside, and I have to wait out here for you to come get me and tell me I can come inside. I feel like I'm in time out." Frustration clouded his features. Tristan wasn't used to being left out of her plans.
Kira sighed, "I'm sorry."
"It's okay," he said reaching for her cheek. "We've always known our relationship would be complicated. This is just one of those times. Besides," he said and Kira finally saw a bright gleam enter his eye, "I might want to test this wall thing out. I'm sure there are still a ton of vampires in the woods I can fight and chuck against it."
"Is there absolutely no chance you'll just lay low and stay out of sight until we can come get you?" Kira knew the answer as soon as the words left her mouth. If there was anything Tristan loved, it was making a little bit of trouble. Whether it was in the classroom last year, on the beach with their friends, or fighting a hoard of vampires, nothing quite got him excited like pissing other people off. Well, everyone besides Kira.
"Come on, would the man you love just chill on the sidelines?" Tristan grinned, circling her with his arms.
"No. Go on, have fun and I'll call you when everything is settled inside," Kira said and quickly kissed him. When they parted, he ran off with a mischievous grin, looking for some vampires to wreak havoc on.
Kira shook her head with a small smile, laughing silently to herself. How someone could be over a century old and still act like a little boy always amazed her. Letting her worries for his safety drop, she crossed through the threshold and sat back down in the car.
As soon as she shut the door, Luke took off towards the town square.
"What other defenses are there?" Kira asked while she looked out the window. "Is there anything else I need to be prepared for?"
"Unfortunately, no," Luke said. "That is our best defense. If that wall was turned on, then it means vampires are probably here and a few made it inside first. Everyone should be in the town square."
"Why would they all gather in one place?" Kira asked. In a terrible way it reminded her of a special she had seen on Animal Planet. Whenever dolphins tried to catch fish, they would surround a giant school and corral them into one center circle so they were easy pickings. She shuddered at the idea.
"We have drills," Vanessa chimed in, thankfully interrupting Kira's thoughts. "It's not like we've never planned for this sort of situation. Everyone gathers in the town square to form a protective circle around the children and the parents take turns keeping vampires at bay with their powers."
But, it can't last very long, Kira thought remembering her trainings with Luke. He was one of the best in the town, the youngest to ever get a solo mission, but still when they trained he tired out before her. His power supply was nowhere near hers and if he was one of the strongest, the Protectors couldn't last more than a few hours the way they were going. Vampires however had endless reserves.
"It's going to be fine," Luke said and grabbed Casey's hand in the front seat. Kira saw that the girl was silently crying through the rearview mirror. "There are ancient swords and things we're taught to use in case of emergency, so we can weaken a vampire with our powers and then behead them the old fashioned way or at least drain them of blood so they can't move."
"Even though we're Protectors, there are sometimes no other options than to kill something," Vanessa added sadly. Despite her words in the car about Tristan and Kira, she believed what she had been taught: she believed vampires could be saved somehow, that there was something inside them worth saving.
Kira met Luke's eyes and wondered what he thought. After the past year, Kira knew without a doubt that he didn't believe vampires could be saved. Did he think being a Protector was a curse? To know this sort of evil exists and to only be able to temporarily protect humans from it and not to kill it. For the first time, Kira wondered if Luke ever looked at her powers with envy. Sure, every vampire along the eastern seaboard was out to get her, but she could fight them one by one. They feared her more than she feared them and that wasn't something a Protector could really say.
Before Kira could continue the thought, something banged into the side of the car, indenting the metal door and sending all four of them flying. Suspended in the air, Kira had the undeniable sense she was about to die. The seatbelt pulled taut across her shoulder as her butt lifted off the cushion and they flipped over. Her hair fell over her features, shrouding her in darkness. A scream caught in her throat. The scene was playing in slow motion. The sky window darkened as the image of clouds was replaced with that of grass and Kira heard shrieks distantly in her ear.
Without registering her movement, Kira circled all four of them in her powers. Her connection to Luke's body was instant, as if it were her own, but the other two girls took a moment longer to register.
Crunching metal thundered in her ears as they landed and continued flipping along the ground. Her neck whipped back and forth with the jerking movements, but her mind was somewhere else. Bones snapped and she rushed to fix them. Muscles tore, skin broke open from shards of glass and blood flowed freely, but Kira used every ounce of energy she had to restore the lethal wounds. If it were her own body or someone else's, Kira didn't know but she acted on instinct alone.
Finally, the car came to a stand still, thankfully on its wheels. Kira opened her eyes to mangled steel, torn seats and broken windows, but amazingly every conduit in the car was okay.
"What in the world?" Vanessa said as she arched her head up and twisted her neck around to find her muscles weren't even sore. But, Kira peered past her at the charging vampire, the same one who had probably slammed into the car. Now energized, Kira easily sent a flame in its direction, turning the vampire to ash in a matter of seconds. When she was angry and warmed up, no vampire would stand a chance against her power.
"Get out of the car now!" Luke yelled and pulled himself through his window. Kira tested her door, which thankfully opened, and slid out. All four of them ran a few yards away to regroup when the car burst into flames: a fire none of them would have survived, not even with Kira's help.
"How are we alive?" Casey asked into the wind. All four of them stared at the burning car. It was only a matter of time before more vampires would come, drawn in by the smell of blood.
"We have to move," Kira said. They were on the outskirts of the town, maybe a mile from the square.
Luke started walking with her, but Vanessa and Casey stayed put.
"What aren't you telling us?" Vanessa asked, standing her ground. Kira met Luke's eyes and even without being able to read his mind, she saw the apprehension. As it was, she felt it creep into her mind too. Fear for his sister's safety and an overwhelming sense of guilt for keeping her in the dark. She shook her head, forcing his thoughts out before they confused her senses. Now was not the time to be distracted, and they had the right to know why they were still breathing.
"I can heal people," Kira said and Luke grabbed her wrist trying to make her stop talking. She pulled free. "In the car, I healed you while we fell. But it's fine, we're all okay and we have other things to worry about."
"You healed us?" Casey asked, looking at Kira in a new way, almost in admiration.
"That's not possible," Vanessa said. "How could you have healed all of us at the same time in a matter of seconds. No one has that sort of power."
"I do," Kira said and started to walk away, not liking the hint of fear that had crept into Luke's sister's eyes.
"Come on." Luke shrugged and caught up with Kira. "We need to stick together and we need to be careful."
They moved as one, sneaking through people's backyards and staying off the main road. They came across three more vampires, but killed them easily with Vanessa, Luke and Casey trapping each while Kira delivered a killing blow.
Twenty minutes later, they reached the town square. Hiding behind the hedges on the front lawn of a house right along the edge of the town's center, the four of them discussed a plan. Vanessa and Kira wanted to charge in just take out any vampires in their sight, but Luke wanted to plan something more strategic. Without walking into the square and making themselves visible, they had no idea how many vampires were there and how the conduits were doing against them. They needed a vantage point.
"Into the house, let's go. We need to see how many there are," Luke said and nudged the girls towards the house. As expected in such a peaceful town, it was open and they slipped inside easily.
Kira followed Luke up the steps and to the attic while he explained to her that this was one of his best friend's homes. He had played there at least once a week while growing up and knew everything there was to know about it. The friend, who Kira had never heard him mention before, was on the west coast with a group of other conduits in his grade, all of them working together to weed out a local vampire population.
When they reached the dusty attic, all four of them pushed their faces against a small circular window and looked over the hedges at the town square, which blazed with fire. Conduits stood in a circle that was four or five deep, taking turns throwing flames out towards the vampires. In the center, Kira could see the children. She envisioned tears drenching their faces and quickly looked away.
On the outskirts of the flames, Kira counted maybe twenty vampires circling the group. Through the light she saw dismembered bodies, reminding her of Jerome in the clearing so long ago when she had awoken from her daze and stumbled over his open chest, almost falling on the bloody heart that rested a few inches from his body. This time, heads spotted the ground. Swords, Kira thought with slight amazement, how medieval.
But, she saw something else that scared her more.
"Luke," she said while grabbing his shoulder and pointed towards the left side of the square, "look!"
Somehow, they had captured a conduit. Three vampires knelt over one body, sucking the blood from someone's veins. From this distance, Kira couldn't tell who it was, but she knew exactly what it meant.
"Any moment they'll be immune," Kira said, flashing back to the image of her father as he died trying to free her mother. She knew exactly what happened when vampires became immune to a conduit's power. They would rip through the protective circle. They would go straight for the children in a mindless craze.
"We have to go, immediately," Vanessa said and jerked away from the window.
"No," Kira commanded and grabbed the girl's arm. "I have to go. You'll just get hurt. I'm the only thing they won't be immune to. Stay here until I've killed them and then join everyone else in the circle."
Luke understood and nodded, grabbing his sisters other arm to keep her in place. Without hesitation, Kira took off at a run, leaping down the steps two at a time and out the front door of the house not caring who, or what, saw her.
"Stop!" She yelled when she reached the edge of the town square. Every single vampire, except for the three piled over the conduit, actually did pause to look at her. Maybe not the best idea, Kira thought and wanted to smack herself. Hungry eyes regarded her as she approached the feeding frenzy, but no vampires made a move to capture her yet. Maybe they had finally learned how powerful she was. Or maybe, she thought sickly, they knew they had all the time in the world to wait and watch what she did.
The conduit man on the ground barely struggled anymore. Limp limbs fell against the grass and the sun kissed skin turned gray like snowy ash. Too late, Kira thought wildly. Her emotions were starting to careen out of control just like the car they had been in. And just like that car, Kira feared she was about to go down in flames.
Finally close enough, Kira let her power loose and plowed through the three vampires, who never once looked up at her approach. Now, through smoke and fire, they looked at Kira in shock as their skin burst into flames and they evaporated into ash.
Kira ran over the conduit and knelt down beside him, searching his features for some familiarity. But, Kira had no idea who it was. She leaned against his chest, listening for a heartbeat, but there was none. She reached into his body with her power, searching for wounds to heal, but unlike with Luke, there was nothing she could latch onto. He was gone and it was all because of her: all because she brought the vampires here.
Well, if they wanted her, all they had to do was catch her.
Kira stood and slowly let her eyelids rise to search around her. While she had been fighting, the vampires had surrounded her. Icy blue slits circled ebony pupils as the vampires stared with hunger in their eyes. Razor sharp fangs poked out of open mouths that grinned in anticipation of what they thought would be their next meal. Kira knew better. Silently, she dared them to approach.
One vampire stepped forward and Kira went straight for him, shooting her fire like a spear. It pierced his heart and the vampire fell to its knees before crumbling apart. Another charged and another fell. Kira was not messing around this time. In high school, she had let Diana go free. She felt sorry for hurting another person, but now Kira knew better. Tristan was different. He was an anomaly in his species — a vampire with a soul and a heart that was full of goodness. But, Kira could read the bloodlust in these vampires' eyes and could hear the animalistic growls rumbling from their throats. Even if she wasn't thrilled with the idea, she didn't have time to hesitate.
Not waiting anymore, Kira flew little shots of fire at every vampire circling her. Each one took a step back as the flames hit their chests, but remained standing. Annoyed expressions gathered on their features.
Come on, Kira thought, come at me.
For the first time, she found the fight thrilling. Blood pumped in her veins, probably making the vampires want her more. Tristan must be rubbing off on me, Kira thought with a laugh. She let the excitement build. Her power bubbled with it until Kira felt like she were a rubber band about to snap.
Then they came at her, all fifteen vampires at once, and Kira let go.
She circled her body in flames, making sure her neck was protected, and then shot the rest out. Finesse was not necessary, just raw power. She let herself drain, turning in circles, shooting instinctively in every direction. Luke would be angry at her wasting so much energy, but Luke was beyond her thoughts now.
The more power Kira brought forth, the closer and closer she came to losing it. Her mind wasn't registering the town square or the conduits anymore. Even the vampires had been pushed from conscious thought. Her fight or flight instinct forced her arms to keep moving, arching in circle, setting flames to anything that moved towards her.
Small black dots formed on her pupils, blinding her vision and expanding until she truly couldn't see anything. Kira had been to this place before — the place where she disappeared and everything became her power.
Had she been conscious, Kira would have realized that she had singed every vampire around her minutes ago. If any were still in the town, they would be running to face the UV wall rather than confront her.
If she had been conscious she would have realized it was Luke who approached her and not an enemy.
"Luke, what are you doing?" Kira would have heard Vanessa shout. She would have seen the entire town watch her go up in flames with admiration and also hesitation clouding their features. They had never seen anyone with so much power and so little control.
As it were, Kira saw something approach through the haze of her delirium. Instantly, she focused everything she had on that spot, the only one moving around her. Still it came so Kira focused more. Why won't you die? She thought. It had never taken this long to burn a vampire, not once she had harnessed her energy.
"Kira."
She heard the whisper along the back of her thoughts.
"Kira."
It was getting louder now. What was that?
"Kira!"
A scream now, ripping through her focus and her mind, shredding whatever ideas had been forming until all she heard was the screaming of her name over and over again. It sounded like Luke.
A sense of calmness blossomed in the back of her thoughts, pushing the anger and fury aside until there was almost no space for it. The spots blinding Kira began to recede. Her vision slowly returning into blobbed shapes.
Fire still roared from her hands, hands that seemed pressed up against something soft.
"Kira, come back. Control. Remember, you need to control it." Luke spoke into her thoughts. Kira pulled back trying to rein it in. Her palms screamed at her as she sucked the flames back in, making her blood boil in the effort.
Finally, Kira focused her thoughts. The first thing she saw were Luke's eyes, right in front of her face, pulling her back to reality. His thoughts in her mind and his eyes locked on hers were all that saved her from herself.
Stumbling back and fully awakened, Kira still felt confused. Luke reached his arms out to steady her. She looked around at the dusty wind around her. The vampires. The attack. The children.
Kira jerked around towards the center of the square. Everyone stared back at her, but she looked through the adults to see that even the kids were okay.
"Luke?" She asked, her voice raspy from exertion.
He nodded reassuringly, still holding her upright.
"I may have lost control." She smiled at him. Luke barked out a laugh and pulled her in for a big bear hug.
"Maybe just a little," he said into her hair.
"So, what now?" Kira pulled back and stepped out of his arms.
"Now, you sit down and rest, and let us do our job."
"Which is what?"
"Making sure all the vampires are gone," he said. Kira nodded with understanding. She shouldn't use her powers again for a while anyway, not when she was so close to the edge. Letting her feet drop out below her, Kira plopped down onto the ground.
Many of the conduits were still looking at her, throwing sidelong stares in her direction and waiting to see if she would explode again. After yesterday, Kira had thought she was finally starting to fit in. They had watched her battle her grandfather. She had gained his respect and theirs.
But she was still different, still an 'other.' And all she wanted was to find Tristan so that he could hold her close and tell her it would be all right. He understood feeling different; feeling like you'll never find a place in the world where you fit in. Sometimes Kira thought the only place where she could feel perfectly at home and in control was in his arms. She wanted them wrapped around her right now.
But, Tristan was still out past the wall. Locked out by the very thing that kept Kira alive: the sun.
Kira watched as Luke left with a bunch of other men. The further from the square they got, the more he blended into the crowd. Sonnyville was where he belonged. Kira thought that could be true for her eventually. She hoped she could find a place with her grandparents. But, if there was ever a time to leave with Tristan, this was it. Staying in Sonnyville would be a danger to everyone, at least until every vampire understood that they couldn't mess around with her.
The only way Kira thought to do that was to help Tristan hunt Diana down. She would kill her and any other vampire that got in her way. It was the only way to show the world she meant business.
The only real question left in Kira's mind was would she leave Luke behind or take him with them?