The next morning when Kira woke up on Luke’s couch, drool dribbled down her cheek and her head pounded from a headache.
Yeah, she thought, yesterday really happened.
The scent of coffee drifted in from the kitchen and she dragged herself from the warmth of the covers to face her new life. Today, she had to talk to her mother. Kira had to learn about her real parents and about her history. There was no turning back and there never would be. All she could do was rise to the challenge.
"I guess we can add skipping school to the list of badass things you’ve done," Luke said, as he entered the living room. "It’s right up there with taking on four vamps all by yourself." She tried to smile and took the cup he handed to her.
"Advil?" she asked. He nodded and returned a few minutes later with two maroon pills in his hand.
"Headache?" She nodded. "How are you feeling otherwise?"
"A little shocked and awed, a little scared out of my mind, and just a little like myself." Kira took another sip and felt a rush of warmth spread through her body in a completely natural sort of way. It was refreshing. "So what happens now, Luke?"
"I take you home and you talk with your mom."
"You mean my aunt."
"No, I mean your mom. Whether she gave birth to you or not is irrelevant. She still raised you, and she’s still your mom." Kira nodded slightly at his words, hoping she would eventually feel the same way and not just betrayed.
"I meant more along the lines of, I’ve accepted this whole supernatural world business and I’ve accepted whatever birthright I have, so what happens now?"
"I’m supposed to train you and teach you, but we can worry about that later. Now, let’s watch the new episode of Top Chef I have saved on my DVR. You observe the food, and I’ll observe Padma Lakshmi."
"Sometimes I worry about you," Kira said as she rolled over to lean her head on his shoulder. It was her favorite show and she relished in the normalness of it.
For the next hour, Luke made inappropriate comments about the host and Kira unsuccessfully tried to turn his attention to the food and the art of being a chef. They sipped coffee and attempted to enjoy the peace. But Kira heart constricted when Padma resolutely said, "Please pack your knives and go." The words sounded more like a death sentence to Kira, who knew she needed to pack up and go as well. Her parents would be furious with her and had probably been calling her nonstop. Thank god for the ability to turn a cell on silent, Kira thought.
She helped Luke put the pull-out couch away and folded the sheets she had used. Then Kira helped drop the dusty brown cushions back in their place, carried the dirty dishes into his tiny old-fashioned kitchen with hideous blue cabinetry, and finally grabbed her handbag to follow him out the door.
"Luke?" she asked after a while of driving in silence. He looked over in her direction to show she had gained his attention. "Thanks for everything. For letting me spend the night, for coming to stop me when I couldn’t stop myself, and for doing the hard thing by telling me the truth." He reached over and squeezed her hand. "Do you think we could do something fun and normal tomorrow? It will be Saturday," she asked when they pulled up in front of her house.
"I’ll rally the troops and surprise you. Now, good luck. Call me if you need me later."
"Thanks," she said as she pushed the car door open and slid out.
Luke drove away, leaving her alone in front of her home. It had never seemed as daunting as it did then. The car was in the driveway, meaning her mother had skipped out on work. The real question in Kira’s mind was, is she angry or worried? Will I open the door to screaming and yelling, or hugs and kisses? If Kira knew her mother, the wrath of God was about to fall upon her.
Hesitantly, Kira lifted her foot, let it hover above the ground for a moment, and then placed it in front of her to begin the long walk to her front door. She had decided this morning to rise to the occasion, and Kira had a feeling this conversation would be the toughest part.
The front door opened before she even had time to take her key out of her handbag.
"Where have you been?" her mother shouted and pulled her inside by the arm. "Your father and I have been worried sick. We were up all night. I must have called you a hundred times, but did you call us back? No! Of course not. Why bother to calm the woman who has raised you since birth and thought you dead in a ditch by the side of the road?"
Kira fought the urge to scream back and allowed her mother to vent her frustration. It almost felt normal, and in some weird way, the fight comforted rather than hurt Kira. But all she kept thinking was, how dare you yell at me—you lied to me, for my whole life you lied to me. Who are you? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you protect me?
Kira let out a slow breath and tried to rein in her anger. She needed answers, and she had a feeling that she would need family. Eventually, they could be her true family again.
"Do you have anything to say for yourself?" Her mother panted when she had finished ranting.
"I almost died," Kira said softly. She wasn’t sure how to talk to her mother about this without sounding accusatory, and she figured remaining calm would be the best decision. "Vampires almost killed me." The words came out with a trace of bitterness that Kira couldn't fight, but she couldn't hide all her feelings.
She almost wanted to cry and fall into her mother’s arms, but she held back and watched as her mother’s hand rose to catch the gasp leaving her mouth. Kira observed as her mom backed up into the couch and, like an afterthought, fell into a seated position.
"Oh god, oh god," her mother repeated until Kira came to sit down next to her. "Where was Luke? I never imagined you’d been in real danger." Kira grabbed her mother’s shaking hand.
"It’s okay, I saved myself…" Kira let her words linger. Her mother stiffened and looked at Kira with eyes full of horror.
"How much do you know?"
"Not everything, but enough. I stayed with Luke overnight because I needed some time to adjust before I came home. I wasn’t sure how it would feel to look at you knowing I was just a mistake, that I’m your charge and not your daughter. Oddly enough, it feels half-normal and only half-painful." Kira let her fingers slip from her mother’s and moved to the other end of the couch, rolling her knees into her chest.
Her mother sat very still, looking straight ahead with wide eyes. "Will you ever forgive me?" she whispered while bowing her head into her hands.
"I hope so," Kira answered truthfully. She didn't know if she could ever let the pain of not knowing who she was fall away. She loved her mother, but right now, she felt as though she didn't know who her mother really was. "Were you ever going to tell me I was adopted? That my whole life has been a lie?"
"Oh, Kira." Her mother reached for her hand, but Kira moved it away, not ready to forgive her yet. "It hasn't all been a lie. I am your mother, in every way but genetically. Your father and I love you. Your sister loves you. We’ve always been a family." A tear escaped Kira’s eye then. "If you won't forgive me right now, will you at least let me explain?"
"Yes." Kira let the word slip from her mouth before she could stop it. This was the point of no return. Once the story was told, everything about her heritage would be true, but in some ways she thirsted for it. She needed a history—a past to hold on to. "You need to start with my real parents."
"Can we talk outside?" her mother asked while rising from the couch. "These are stories even your father cannot hear."
Kira nodded.
She and her mother always had important conversations outdoors. When she had wanted to go to boarding school, they had walked in a park for an hour. When she got her ears pierced, they had gone to the swing set in her old backyard. Something about the wind and the trees seemed calming—they made even the biggest arguments seem small. For the first time, Kira wondered if it was a conduit trait, that maybe something about being in the sun calmed her people. But she pushed the thought aside, not wanting to linger on any musings that made her feel at all
subhuman.
Kira grabbed a blanket to wrap around her shoulders and quickly made instant hot chocolate to bring outside while her mother ran up the steps. She set her mother’s cup on the table and nestled into the chair to wait. The air was cool on her cheek—a typical Carolina fall. The leaves of the dense forest behind her house rustled with each churning breeze, almost like waves with their cyclical splash. But here, only the scent of salt in the air reminded her that she lived on the coast.
Kira’s mother walked outside in a sweatshirt with a box of tissues in hand. "Kira, I don’t even know where to begin. I haven’t spoken of the conduits in years. Your father doesn’t even know about my past. I never wanted any of us to be a part of that world."
"Start with my father, your brother. What was he like? You are Punishers, right?" Kira tried to keep the crack from her voice. She thought it the logical place to start, the beginning of her father’s tale before he even met her real mother. She wished she had a picture, some sort of token to remember them both by.
"Your father was amazing. He was the protective older brother, the ideal fighter, the perfect son, the dream boy, but most of all he was someone you knew without a doubt you could count on for anything in your life. He wanted to protect the entire world, to fight epic battles, and he started by helping me." Kira noticed that her mother’s gaze had glazed over. She was staring somewhere beyond their backyard, back into her memories. "When we were younger, he made sure none of the kids bullied me for being small and weak with my power. You see, Kira, I ran away from that world because I had no place in it. As a child, I could never truly channel the sun properly, and when my power matured at the age of sixteen, I still couldn't hurt a fly. To a Punisher that is the ultimate insult, and many of our people turned against me, but never your father. I lived at home, just waiting until I could leave and go to college and be normal. And, he accepted me."
Kira grabbed a tissue then. It seemed her mother and she had both been misfits in unfamiliar worlds, and she painted the most beautiful picture of her true father as someone fearless. Something Kira wished she had inherited some of.
"When he was eighteen, he went on his first hunt and made his first kill. He returned, boasting of how much fun he’d had and how exhilarating the fight was. He said he was the only newbie who hadn’t needed help from the elders to stop his vampire. I could tell, just by looking at him, that he had found his place and that he would grow to be one of our best fighters. Conduit societies are stuck in the past in many ways. The men went out to hunt for vampires to help protect humanity, and the women remained at home protecting the children in case our location was ever found out. And the entire town knew your father would be the best of us. Every time he came back from a trip, he shined with pride, and others told the tales of his heroics. Because for us, the stronger the fighter, the more divine, and your father was seen as a heavenly angel to many of our people."
"But that all changed?" Kira guessed, knowing this story had everything but a happy ending.
"Yes, that all changed. Most youths mature at sixteen and start going on guided missions, but at age twenty we are allowed to hunt alone. At first, your father acted much the same and came back with joy in his eyes. However, one day, a few weeks before he turned twenty-one, he returned solemnly. Everyone thought he had failed to catch his target for the first time. Nothing unusual for a young hunter. They all let him be. But I knew your father, and I knew something else was wrong."
"Did you talk to him about it?" Kira asked. Their society was so different from everything she had grown up with. She couldn’t imagine the pressure of feeling like a warrior and never being able to make mistakes. Kira looked at her mother’s red curls as they blew in the breeze and wondered if she viewed them as a curse.
"I tried. I’ll never forget what he told me. I had been in the kitchen washing the dinner plates when I noticed him sitting outside on the back steps, so I paused and went out to comfort him. I told him that everyone makes mistakes and everyone misses every so often, but I could tell they were just empty words. He was looking up at the stars with the deepest confusion in his eyes, and then he turned to me and asked, ‘Ellie? Have you ever wondered if we were wrong?’ and for a moment I didn’t understand. But when he turned to look back at the night sky, I realized he meant us, the Punishers. Were we wrong in killing? Did vampires really have souls? ‘Of course not,’ I told him full of confidence. We were never even allowed to question those beliefs, rooted in our ancestral history for thousands of years. I saw him shut himself away when I answered. He stood up and went inside to finish the dishes, and I was the one left to ponder why he would ever ask me that."
"What would you reply now?" Kira asked her mother, realizing they almost mirrored the scene from her memories, sitting on the porch, but staring at the sun rather than the stars.
"I’ve never seen a vampire who didn't appear evil to the core, but I suppose there are always exceptions to the rules." Her mother paused, and Kira thought that maybe she was wishing she had used that response with her brother, to provide some sort of solace.
For a moment, Kira allowed herself to think of Tristan. Could he be that exception? But she shook her head and tried to focus on her real father and his story. "It was my birth mother, wasn’t it? A Protector changing his mind?"
Her mother nodded. "I didn’t realize it for a long time, but in the year that followed, he went on more solo missions and came back with rebellious ideas of capturing vampires and running tests on them rather than killing them. He wanted to research the old texts to see if anyone had ever found a vampire with his soul intact. He never found anything, but the elders were still so angry with him. He was their golden boy and within a year he became dirt. I noticed he received secret letters and made whispered phone calls when he thought our family was asleep. I confronted him, but he never answered straightly. I never dreamed he was secretly dating a Protector. Of all the rules in our society, that is the most unbreakable and the most forbidden. For two years this continued, but soon after his twenty-third birthday, he received news that scared him enough to finally come clean to me. I was twenty-one at the time and had been living away from home for a while. I had already met your adoptive father and we were so in love. Of course, I traveled home to visit, but the conduit life already seemed so far off to me.
"But one day, I opened the door of my apartment to your father’s very conflicted face. I read joy, but also the deepest sorrow, and I knew something was incredibly wrong. ‘Ellie,’ I remember him choking out to me before breaking down into sobs. I brought him inside, and there he confessed to me that he had fallen in love with the most beautiful woman in the world, one who had the purest blonde hair imaginable. At first, I was horrified. I wasn’t sure whether to comfort or to scold him, but I knew I was all he had. He told me how they first met while she had been living in New York trying to protect its citizens from the ever-increasing local vampire population. That had been the site of his first solo mission, and they had been tracking the same clan when they ran into each other. At first, they hated each other but then they realized they needed to help each other in order to hunt down and weaken the clan. They started debating philosophies until each was unsure of the lessons they’d been taught since birth. And when they hunted down the clan, your father killed and your mother weakened, but neither felt the same joy as before. He said from that first meeting, they never stopped talking. At first, it had been secret run-ins in New York, then letters, then phone calls, until finally they had stopped taking on real missions and just escaped to meet each other in private. He said they had secretly gotten married a month ago, and he pulled a ring from a chain around his neck. And finally, he showed me a letter your mother had just written, confessing she was pregnant with a child."
"And it was the worst news imaginable?" Kira guessed and sipped on her hot cocoa for solace. She sank further into her seat and grabbed a preemptive tissue to wipe at the tears that would soon be falling.
&
nbsp; "No, your father was the happiest I had ever seen him, but it was difficult. They knew there would be no turning back. A child meant a life on the run, because you had to be kept secret. He confessed to me that they had made a plan to meet up where they had first met and then run away, and keep running if that was what would be needed to keep you safe. He was going to completely turn his back on his people, all for you, the unborn child he already cherished above everything else."
"But the plan backfired?" Kira asked and her mother nodded. "This seems to be a story where everything that could have gone wrong, did go wrong."
"In many ways, it was. Your father and mother did run away together, and you were born eight months after your father had come to see me. I was the only one he told, and I begged him to come see me, to let me see you. He told me they had found a safe place and he couldn’t give it away, but that they would chance it and come to me. I was overjoyed. For one secret weekend, your father came to visit me, and I met your mother and you. You were the cutest baby ever, only two months old and already with a full set of curly blonde and red hair. You always had a smile on your face, and to the outside viewer all three of you would have looked like the perfect family. In the short hours I spent with your mother, I learned she was caring and gentle. She was an amazing woman, and I easily understood how the two of them had come to love each other. When they left, I assumed it would be years before I could meet you again, but in reality it was only a few short days."
"What happened?" Kira asked, knowing the heartbreaking story of her true parents was about to come to an end. Her mom was just about twenty-three in the story, and Kira knew that was the age she had always been told she was born.
"On their way back home, they were discovered by Punishers from a different state. They were captured and questioned, and you were almost put to death until your mother’s people came to argue for your life. In the middle of the night, your father tried to escape. He found your mother and you, but while running away, you three were jumped by vampires. Your father was killed, as was your mother, but the vampires had all shared a little of the blood so none was completely immune to our powers. We got there just in time to save you and hold them at bay by mere feet. We rescued you and saved your father’s body, but your mother’s was still on the other side of the barrier that our powers had created. When we went back the next day, it was gone."
"And I was given to you, my closest relative, so I could live outside of that world and maybe have a chance at a normal life. The Protectors agreed to guard me, and you and Father adopted me to save me."
"And also to love you, as I always have. I used to pray at night that you hadn’t been gifted with any powers, but as you grew, I knew that wasn’t true. You had eyes of fire and hair to match and my prayers turned to hoping you would never find out what you were."
"But, I did."
"You did," her mother agreed sadly. She had barely looked at Kira while they spoke, too afraid to see judgment from her daughter’s eyes. The change saddened Kira, as the slight awkwardness in the air spoke of their forever altered relationship.
"What were their names?" Kira asked, wanting a small thing to remember her parents by. Names were simple, but held so much meaning.
"Andrew and Lana."
Kira took another tissue to wipe at her face. The story of her parents was sadder than she ever imagined. She had hoped they weren’t dead, maybe just locked away somewhere. In a way, it seemed like they had only just died because she had only just found them. Kira watched the fading sun sink beneath the tree line and watched the ruby wisps of cloud start to fade. Her mother and she had been outside for a long time. Kira appreciated the stories. She had needed the stories. But it wasn’t enough to make her forget everything else.
"I have to ask why you never told me? Even knowing I was adopted without knowing all the details? I could have handled this new world of the conduits so much easier if every other facet of my life wasn’t shattering along with it."
Kira’s mother eased from her seated position and walked the three short steps required to stand before her daughter. She knelt, cupping Kira’s hands in her own, trying to close the distance that had sprouted between them.
"I just didn't know how. I wanted to. Your father and I discussed it every year. First we excused it because you were too young, then because you were going through puberty and we knew that was a fragile time for building an identity. Then your sister came around, and we didn't want you to resent her, and then you were in New York and so far away."
"And then I came home as an adult." Kira pulled her hands away and returned them to the empty mug on the side table.
Her mother let her hands drop to the floor, as a tear slid from her cheek. "You’re still my baby. I didn't know how to tell you without breaking the family apart."
"I understand, in a lot of ways I really do, but I’m just not ready to let it go. I need some time to adjust, so can we put the pause button on this conversation? I need a break and time to think." Kira resituated herself in the chair so that her body leaned away from her mother’s. She needed to be alone, needed to ruminate in peace.
Her mother understood and stepped backward, giving Kira space. "Of course, I just want to give you one thing." She drew a small envelope from her pocket and put it onto the table next to the now empty mugs of hot chocolate. "It's a token I’ve had locked away for a while. Remember I told you that my brother came to visit with you? Well, we took a single photograph, and I put it in a locket that I always meant to give to you when I told you the truth. Let me know if you need me, but I’ll leave you alone for a while."
When her mother had disappeared inside the house, Kira lifted the packet and heard the jingle of a chain scratching against paper. She tipped the envelope and let the necklace slide out. The locket was a silver oval, completely plain with no engravings, and next to it on the chain was a gold ring the size of a man’s finger. She looked at the inside arch of the band and read the cursive words etched there. "Love will prevail, your Lana". His wedding ring, she realized. No, not his, Kira thought. Her dad Andrew's wedding ring—the one that tied him to his true love, her mother, Lana. Kira clutched the ring to her chest, letting tears fall freely, and used her other hand to open the locket, which had fallen to the other end of the chain.
Her father and mother held her between them. Three smiles and three pairs of green speckled eyes looked out from the photograph. Kira couldn't believe she had no memories left from those few months she had had alone with her parents. Her father’s hair was a mop of red curls, and freckles spanned his cheeks. His smile was wide and open, just like hers in that it was hard to tell if she was laughing or just smiling. Her mother’s hair looked like the sun. It was so perfectly blonde and straight like Luke’s. Her smile was more reserved, but her eyes were the same large shape as Kira’s, just slightly too big for her face. Kira wondered if her own had ever looked so full of joy and secrets. And there Kira was, a tiny little baby sandwiched between them, laughing and looking up at her mother.
Kira stared at the photo. It was minute in size but more important to her than anything else she had ever owned. She moved over to the hammock and lay down, staring at the open-faced locket while time passed by unnoticed. This was the only connection she would ever have to them, and she wanted to memorize every detail she could. Kira wished she could recover just one memory, but her mind from those early weeks of life was too far gone.
A car rolling on gravel distracted Kira, and she heard Chloe giggle and her father’s deep laugh. They were home. Both were removed from the conduit world, and for a moment, Kira wondered what he thought the story was. How did he imagine her parents had died? A car crash? A murderer? No one but her mother had the real truth, the full story, except maybe her grandparents. Strangers to her, who she now knew must exist somewhere in the world, but had never wanted anything to do with her.
The screen door opened.
"Honey?" the baritone voice of her father aske
d. "I spoke with your mother. I just wanted to see how you were. If there was anything I could do?" Kira shook her head. "I love you, and I always have."
"I know," Kira replied, still turned away. She heard him sigh as he went back inside. Kira was sure her mother had told him not to push her and to let her be.
She curled further up like a baby, closing the locket and gripping it to her chest, as close to her heart as possible. The stars were starting to appear in the ever-darkening sky, and Kira let her tears pool. Kira cried for the life she was robbed of as a child, the one she had just been robbed of again. She cried for her dead parents and for her living substitutes now guilt-ridden over their lie. Mostly she thought about what could have been and what would be. About training with Luke and what training with her parents might have been like. She wondered if her parents would have told her the histories of the conduits like bedtime stories to gradually fall asleep to.
Somewhere in all the sorrow, Kira fell asleep and let her dreams do the imagining for her. She hardly noticed when her real life father picked her up from outside and carried her inside to bed.
Chapter Nine