The next few weeks passed quickly for Kira.
She and Tristan continued to date in secret, meeting at the beach or some private place from his past that he wanted to share with her. They picnicked at an old lighthouse that was almost broken down and ready to be demolished, but had an amazing view of the ocean. He snuck into her room after her parents went to sleep so they could lay in each other’s arms and whisper sweet nothings. Kira was coming to love the way his eyes softened when they met hers, how he would gently brush her cheek with his thumb, holding her face as though it were the most fragile thing in the universe. He shared his travels with her, the years he spent in Europe, his impressions of English accents, how frightened he had been on his first African safari before he realized he could do more damage to the animals than they could to him.
And most of all, Tristan shared his art, the most personal part of him. He had sold most of it throughout the years, but he showed Kira some of his favorites——models in Paris, architecture from Russia, the natural beauty of the American West, and best of all, his family and the friends he had met along the way. Each drawing held a different story, a different facet of Tristan. Kira could tell which aspect of his personality fit with each work of art, and it was more intimate than talking could have ever been.
Sometimes, Kira wished she could let Luke in on some of these private moments when Tristan seemed more human and more vulnerable than ever. Maybe then he would understand, but ever since the night outside her front yard, Luke hadn’t even spoken of Tristan, and Kira wouldn’t be the one to break the silence. In school, she stayed around Luke, eating with her friends and pairing up with him in class. If Luke caught her and Tristan swapping secret glances or talking quietly to one another, his features would harden and his eyes would cloud over with frustration. She needed him as her best friend, so she would quickly pull away, only managing to pain Tristan in the process.
Luke continued to train her, teaching her precise control of her powers, like where to aim at a vampire to do the most damage or how to conserve her energy while still firing a deadly shot. She was excited to learn more about her heritage and about the conduit society. But all the while, in the back of Kira’s thoughts lurked dark imaginings about Diana and the plan she was concocting.
One night, when these tumultuous thoughts had kept her from sleep, Kira finally noticed the lump under her bed. She reached down, confused, only to find the old, dusty book she had stolen from Luke but had completely forgotten about. Eager for more information than Luke was sharing, she turned on her reading light and settled into her cushy pillows.
For an entire week, during her free moments without either boy and in the absence of schoolwork, Kira read nonstop. The first few chapters discussed the history of the conduit society, very similar to what Luke had already told her about the split between the Protectors and the Punishers, how the difference of opinions began, and how a natural genetic mutation formed the two different powers and breeds. The anonymous author discussed different opinions on vampires, whether they had souls or not, and one conduit historian actually believed that those of the ancient society, when the Punishers and Protectors had been one breed like Kira, had special powers of healing and knew the secret to saving a vampire’s soul. Kira believed it, even though the other historians in the book discarded the theory, stating, like Luke, that no vampire in history had been saved.
Finally, Kira got to the fourth chapter, all about her kind, the mix that commonly meant chaos and destruction. She turned the page, excited to get cracking, but the chapter was gone. She skipped to the final chapter, about ancient prophecies, and those pages were missing too. The only pieces of evidence that those chapters existed at all were the fringed edges belonging to pages cut cleanly out with scissors or a knife.
Kira was furious—she wanted to know what this group of historians gathered under an anonymous title had to say. She felt deep in her soul that something had been revealed about her true calling—not for destruction, but for life. There was something in the prophecies that would help her. She knew it.
So, even though it was long past midnight, Kira crept down the stairs, through the dark living room of her house, and out the front door. She slid into her car and reversed, not turning her headlights on until she was already down the road and out of the line of sight from her house.
As she neared Luke’s home, Kira slowed, suddenly regretting her rashness and hoping that Luke was awake. She didn’t want to bother him over nothing. It was just a book, and she was sure there were other copies available in mint condition.
Kira stopped the car, turned off the lights, and sat quietly, totally unsure of what she was doing there, until she noticed a figure walk up Luke’s front sidewalk and knock on the door. She was still down the street a little, too far away to be noticed, but also too far away to hear anything or really see anything. But when the porch light turned on and the front door opened, Kira recognized Tristan’s tall, muscular build and imagined the shock on Luke’s face.
When Tristan sauntered inside and the door shut behind him, Kira imagined the shock that must have been displayed on her own face at that moment. What are the two of them possibly discussing? Kira thought, instantly intrigued.
But then realized there was only one topic Luke would tolerate talking to Tristan about, and that was her safety. Something must have happened with Diana, who had been mysteriously absent for weeks, hidden in the shadows, planning something to ruin the happiness Kira had managed to build.
Carefully opening her door, Kira crept out and traversed the lawn, ducking down to stay hidden. She eased around the house toward a side window that looked into Luke’s living room. Her sneakers sank into the muddy, unkempt garden while she lifted her head, just high enough that her eyes could see through the blinds. Kira thanked god for the cover of darkness, because she could see into Luke’s house perfectly, but it would be far more of a challenge for Luke or Tristan to notice her.
Inside, Tristan leaned against the wall with his hands in the pockets of his typical dark jeans. His eyes darted around the room nervously, and then he straightened as Luke walked in. Seeing Luke's ensemble, Kira couldn't keep in the laugh that escaped. He wore full-on flannel pajama pants and an old Marvel comics T-shirt speckled with holes from overuse.
Luke sat on his couch, not offering Tristan a chair, and Kira felt the tension even through the glass window. They stared at each other, not speaking, until Tristan finally pulled a wooden chair from the dining table and sat opposite Luke.
Kira couldn’t make out any of their words, but she could tell Tristan was frustrated by the way he kept running his hands through his hair and shaking his head. Luke responded in a similar fashion, concern covering his features as he nodded along to Tristan’s words, and then stood up to start pacing around the room as he sipped what Kira imagined was hot coffee.
Their movements became more animated as the conversation progressed, and at one point, Luke gripped the back of his couch with both hands and shouted what Kira assumed was a very bad four letter word in Tristan’s direction. He in turn stood up, pointed at himself, then outside, and then spread his arms wide like some sort of act of surrender. Luke started pointing aggressively at the door, jerking his whole body and Tristan moved like lightning, running from Luke’s house before Kira even had time to go inside and demand to know what was happening, something she had planned to do when the conversation seemed less heated.
Now it was too late, so she settled for talking to Luke alone, and she knocked on the window to get his attention, standing fully upright so he could see her. Kira watched as he noticed her, cursed, rolled his eyes, and headed for the door.
"Kira, you have unbelievable timing," he said when he opened the door.
She shrugged, smiled, and replied, "It’s one of my many charms."
He shook his head, led her inside, and disappeared into the kitchen to make her some coffee too.
When Luke emerged, Kira got straight to the po
int. "So, what just happened? And don’t even try to pretend like it was normal to have Tristan come over to ‘hang out’." Kira made air quotations around the word, emphasizing how ridiculous of an explanation it would be.
"Relax, I was going to call you tonight as soon as he left, but you were already here." He sat down next to her on the couch and leaned all the way back, releasing a long exhale as his head came to a rest. Luke rubbed at his eyes and pressed the skin along his nose, letting another sigh escape. "Their plan is so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t see it. Kira…" He turned to look at her finally, with a pained expression. "It will be all my fault if something happens to you. I should have seen this. And I yelled at Tristan, but I’m really just angry with myself."
Kira reached for his hand, holding his warm fingers, trying to give some comfort. "Luke, what is it? What did Tristan say?" He tightened his grip.
"When we’re young, conduits are taught our one major weakness. It’s something out of our control, but we need to be aware of it, always, that’s one of the rules you do not forget, and I did."
"Luke, just tell me." Kira was dying from the not knowing. Finally, the fears she had pushed to the back of her mind during these few weeks of blissful oblivion were coming to the forefront. She didn’t want to see Diana ever again, didn’t want to face her, especially if Luke was this scared too.
"A total eclipse. That’s the only thing that can take our powers away. Being in the eye of a full eclipse makes the sun inaccessible and makes us vulnerable to a vampire’s attack. We lose all our strength. And, Kira…" He grabbed her shoulders, driving the point home. "The eclipse is today."
His hands dropped away and Kira’s entire body slumped back against the couch. She felt as though all the life had been knocked out of her. Today? She thought. Suddenly, time began to slip through her fingers like sand, when there had been buckets of it just moments ago.
"What do we do?" Her voice came out like a whisper, nearly silent and completely foreboding.
Luke abruptly stood up. "Let’s leave, right now. We’ll drive for a few hours—get out of the eye of the eclipse. Diana won’t be able to touch you." He grabbed her arm, trying to pull her along.
"No," Kira said, resisting. "Luke, think for a moment. I have a family, my parents, Chloe. They would be defenseless. I can’t abandon them."
He sank back down. "You’re right."
"How much time do we have?" Kira asked. She assumed it was around three, maybe four, in the morning. The sun would rise in a few short hours.
"About eight or nine hours. It’s supposed to happen around midday, a pure total solar eclipse. They only last for about fifteen minutes, and we will only totally lose our powers for maybe five minutes, but that’s more than enough time for a vampire to kill you."
"So, how do we fight? Do we even have a chance to stand against Diana?"
Luke shook his head and bit his lip, hiding the sadness in his eyes. "I don’t know. Tristan didn’t know what her plan was—he just sensed her and the others in the area. He knew they were up to something, and then we both realized the eclipse at the same time. It’s what they’ve been waiting for, why they’ve taken so long to move into action. And Tristan has got to be part of their plan."
Kira grabbed her phone and dialed his number—straight to voicemail. She tried again, hoping it had been a mistake, but the same thing happened. "He’s not answering his phone. Do you think they took him? Are they hurting him?" Luke just shook his head. Neither one of them had any answers.
Kira's eyes wandered around the room, hoping the answers were written on the wall somewhere, but stopping when they came to rest on her handbag. The book, she realized, the whole reason why she came here. It seemed stupid now, learning about mystical prophecies as if some ancient conduits had all the answers, but Kira realized she didn’t know how much time she would have left to ask Luke about it. And even when the end of her life seemed horribly near, she was curious about those damn missing pages.
"Luke?" He gave her his attention as she pulled the old book from her open purse. "It seems silly now, but I stole this and I wanted to give it back, and ask—"
"Ask about the missing pages? I actually thought you’d notice it sooner. You stole the book a while ago," he interrupted. She shrugged her eyebrows and half-smiled at him, hoping he wasn’t actually angry she took it. "They’re all missing."
"Huh?" Kira questioned, not understanding.
"The councils from each conduit society met one year and decided that knowledge was no longer useful, so they cut the pages from every copy of that book and burned them. I have no idea what they said. No one does, this happened a long time ago—two hundred years ago maybe."
"But why?"
"The rumor was that there had been uprisings, across both the Punisher and Protector societies, urging for a reunited race, and the councils overturned it. They believed the prophecies were egging people on and giving them false hopes. But all of that is just hearsay now."
Instantly, Kira’s curiosity was further piqued. What did that book say about mixed breeds that would lead to a revolt? It must have been something huge, something that could change everything. Maybe it had been about her ability to heal humans and conduits, surely a power any vampire fighter would want to have. But the price of potentially giving a vampire total immunity was too dangerous.
"Kira?" Luke distracted her from those thoughts. "I need to call the council. They’ll know how to proceed. Why don’t you go home for a while? Have breakfast with your family?"
Fear darkened his eyes, even though Luke was trying so hard to hide it. He worried that this could be her last meal. Kira knew he wanted to run, that he didn’t care about her family as much as he cared about her, but when Kira thought of sweet, innocent Chloe, she knew there was no other option. She hugged Luke, pulling him in tight enough to lose her breath in the process, and closed her eyes against the emotion threatening to brim over. There was no time left for tears.
Kira drove home quickly, ignoring stop signs and racing past the speed limit. Suddenly, being home was the most important thing in the world. She knew Luke wouldn’t sleep, that he would be working on a solution for all the time they had left. He was going to meet her at her house at eleven, an hour before the eclipse. Plenty of time to sit and wait and be terrified together. She hated pulling him into this. It was her fight with Diana. Luke had done nothing to deserve any part of the scorn, but she knew there was no way to stop him. He would never let her go down alone.
After she parked, Kira tried to slow her racing heart. Her parents couldn’t know anything was wrong. She wanted them to live in blissful oblivion. There is time, she kept thinking, enough time to work out a solution. The answer would come eventually. All she could hope now was that Tristan was working on a plan of his own and was trying to save her as well. Kira feared his plan was to confront Diana before she could confront Kira, but deep down Kira knew it wouldn’t work. Three-to-one odds were too large, and Tristan had probably been caught already.
The sky was lightening when she finally went inside. Kira could only sit in the car and ruminate for so long. Being afraid was no way to spend the potentially last few hours of her life. So she went inside, straight to the kitchen. Cooking always calmed her, and Kira grabbed the pancake mix from the pantry, cracked open some eggs, and let the serenity of whisking distract her.
When her mother walked down the stairs, Kira had a feast ready. Stacks of fluffy pancakes, bowls of fresh whipped cream, candied berries of all kinds, and freshly squeezed orange juice decorated the table. She had gone a little overboard, Kira knew it, but she was also extremely satisfied with the way everything turned out.
"Kira, my goodness. What are you even doing awake?"
"I just couldn’t sleep." Kira shrugged, feigning indifference, and pulled out a chair for her mom. Not a second later, thumps signaled her dad was descending into the kitchen too.
"Smells amazing, honey. What’s the occasion?"
her father asked, sitting down next to her mother to dig into the food.
"Nothing, I just couldn’t sleep. Can’t a girl do something nice for her family once in a while?"
"Not on a school day. This is more of a Sunday morning thing for you," her dad said with a mouth already full of food. Kira assured him she was just in a good mood and happy for the amazing, even if adoptive, parents she had. They talked lightly while they ate, until Kira’s mother went to wake up Chloe. Within half an hour, Kira was hugging everyone goodbye, holding on for just a second too long, and assuring her parents that she was just going to quickly clean up and be on her way to school.
When the door closed, Kira raced back to the kitchen, splashed water on her face, and tried her best not to cry. She leaned over the sink, one hand on either side, looking out at her sunlit backyard and decided to just let the tears come anyway. Once started, they were impossible to control. She moved slowly, picking up the dirty dishes, putting them in the dishwasher, finishing the orange juice, and putting the leftovers in a Ziploc bag. The mundane tasks gave her something to concentrate on, but when they were done, she went up to her room and actually put her focus on what would happen.
Diana would come and attack her. That was certain. That Kira would not be able to stop her for what might as well be hours was another certainty. The only unknown was Tristan. Had Diana managed to turn him? Would he come looking for her blood or Diana’s?
Kira sighed and reached for the drawings of his she had kept hidden in her bookshelf. All were of her. She had a collection of these portraits now. Kira looked through them until she reached the one Tristan had crafted when he had been secretly watching her in Battery Park. She took note of the flowing skirt and tank top she had worn and searched for them in her closet. She opted for a long-sleeve shirt instead, because even in South Carolina, December brought cool air.
On the drive home from Luke’s, Kira had tried to think of a game plan, and like a typical girl, the outfit was a huge part of that. Would she go hardcore like Buffy the Vampire Slayer in nineties cargo pants and a tank top, maybe with a bomber jacket? Would she play it innocent to make Diana think of her as helpless and maybe gain some small upper hand? Or, would she appeal to Tristan and the human parts of him she knew existed? He was her last hope. Unless Tristan could fight Diana, Kira knew she was doomed, so she decided to wear the same thing she had worn when they had shared their first kiss and when he had first decided to open up to her and to let her inside his secret world.
By the time Kira had finished brushing her hair and getting ready, Luke had arrived. He came dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, deciding to downplay the situation just like she had. Kira tried to change her morose mood, but when she saw his face and the worry lines creasing his forehead, she allowed herself to be sad.
"What did the council say?" Kira asked as she led Luke through her house and out to the back steps where they had decided to wait for Diana to make her move.
"They said we should run. Ordered it in fact, because of how dangerous your capture would be. I told them to go to hell."
Kira laughed. Luke always had been a charmer. "I bet they loved that."
"Actually, I hung up as they were screaming at me. Assuming we survive, we’ll definitely have some things to answer to."
"No point to live if not dangerously," Kira replied as she sat down to wait.
"When did that become your motto?"
"About the time I moved to Charleston." Kira let her tone become darkly humorous. Had she listened to Luke in the beginning, none of this would be happening. But it still all seemed worth the risk. She knew Tristan would be trouble from the start, but she guessed with boys, you never really could know how much trouble until it was too late and you loved them enough not to care about the consequences.
"If you could take it all away and go back to New York, would you?" Luke shifted his gaze from one of her eyes to the other, earnestly searching for the truth in her answer.
"No. I suppose I would have been a target no matter where I was. At least, down here in South Carolina, I had you."
"Have, you have me." He reached out his hand.
Kira squeezed it, letting him know she loved his support, but then released him. "I wish you would go and save yourself Luke. We don’t know what’s going to happen here, and I don’t want you to die for me. Please, just go."
"You know I won’t." He settled down, stretching his hands up toward the sky, acting brave and like he had no worries in the world.
And just like that, there were no words left to say. Kira knew Luke loved her, and he knew she loved him too. She could beg him to leave and fall into hysterics, but it would be useless and mentally draining. So instead, the two of them sat in silence, watching the sun rise higher, waiting for it to disappear.
Chapter Fifteen