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at the sight of him. The whites of his eyes reflected the headlights and seemed to glow, while the rest of him, dressed in dark jeans and a black T-shirt, melted into the night. He saw the car and gracefully stood up, like a panther easing out of a nap. Kira smiled at him, feeling giddy, before twisting back around to say her goodbye to Luke.

He, she noticed, was not smiling at all. Instead, he had a viselike grip on the steering wheel, one that was stopping the circulation to his fingers. His stare was so forceful, Kira feared beams of sunlight would burst from his pupils and melt his front windshield.

"Luke?"

He twisted his hands around the wheel and the leather whined in protest. His entire body had tensed up, and Kira noticed the bulge of muscles under his long-sleeve shirt.

"Luke?" Kira hesitantly extended her hand, barely touching his shoulder before he snapped his attention to her, still stiff, and now with bloodshot eyes from the strain of not blinking.

"Look, Kira, I tried to be a good friend and stay calm, I really did, but how can you be so blind?" He took his hands from the wheel, running his fingers through his hair, practically ripping the strands from his scalp. "He’s a killer, okay? A killer. It’s what they are. Every time he sees you, part of him wants to kill you. Every time. And I know he promised it wouldn't happen, but you’re a fool to believe him. An idiot."

Kira reached for Luke’s arms, trying in vain to calm him down. She tried to speak, but he cut her off.

"No, okay, no. You have to hear this. He lives by drinking human blood. Do you understand? Human blood and human blood, only. And he’s going to live forever while you get old and die, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing in this world that will change that. Even if you wanted to become a vampire, you couldn’t. There’s no need to risk your life dating him when he’ll just kill you eventually." Luke was yelling now, fogging up the windows with his spat out words. "Maybe not now, but what about when you’re fifty or sixty and he still looks eighteen? What then? When you’re old and wrinkled, he’ll kill you while you sleep and you won’t even know until it’s too late because you trust him."

He made the word trust sound dirty, and Kira listened to his heavy breathing, failing to think of any response. The door behind her swung open and Kira jolted backward, into the hardness of what she knew could only be Tristan’s chest.

"While I do love seeing you act like a complete ass, Luke, I’ve heard enough. I won’t just sit here and listen to you talk crap about me. If you want to tell me something, say it to my face or shut up."

Kira watched Luke grow angrier by the second. She was too afraid to move—too fearful that any action she made would just add fuel to the fire.

"Kira?" Tristan asked, and a hand stretch out in front of her, offering escape.

"Stop." Luke grabbed her around the wrist.

Yup, Kira thought, I’ll just stay right here and not move a muscle. Luke was glaring at a spot just over her shoulder, and based on the tingle prickling her neck, Kira guessed Tristan’s face was right about at that spot.

They sat like that for what seemed like an hour to Kira—a complete standoff—before Luke released her hand. For a futile moment, she thought that he had relented and was going to end the absurdly macho fight. But then he reached for the handle, jumped out of the driver’s seat, and sprinted around the front of the car with his hand extended.

Kira knew what he was doing before the fire shot from his hand.

"Luke!" she shouted to no avail.

Tristan was hit right in the chest with the full force of Luke’s power. He flew off the ground, sailing through the air to land on his back. Kira knew he could have run away had he wanted to, that the fire was hurting him but was meant to remove him more than to harm him. Still, he let Luke attack, not fighting back, but Kira saw the strain on his features and the taut pull of his lips. She leapt from the car, directly into Luke’s flames, and let them absorb into her body.

It was the first time Kira had absorbed another conduit’s power. She felt alive, electrified from the tips of her toes to the strands of hair on her head. She let his power funnel into her, felt it spread throughout her limbs and warm her, and Kira almost began to feel like she was pulling the power from Luke rather than he pushing it into her.

"Luke, stop. Someone might see. You have to stop."

He waited a second, full of internal struggles and rage, before ending his onslaught.

"Listen to me," Kira said, silencing him by covering his lips with her hand when he started to protest. "No, listen. This thing with Tristan is something I have to do. I know you don’t understand it, I know you hate it, but I need you to respect me and my decisions, and leave him be." She released Luke’s mouth, but he remained silent.

Kira stepped back, forming a triangle between the three of them, looking from one boy to the other. "This goes for both of you, no fighting. None at all, or I will figure out something really terrible to do to both of you. So just stop. I’m not some toy to fight over. I make my own choices and nothing will change that. So, Luke, just go home."

A series of emotions fluttered across Luke’s face, from anger toward Tristan, to embarrassment over his own actions, to what Kira dared say was apologetic for her sake. Regardless, he silently walked to the other side of his car, hopped in, and drove away without looking back.

"Well, now that he’s gone…" Tristan supplied, and Kira faced him, noting the smug smile as he sauntered over and tried to hug her.

"Hold on." She put her palm against his chest, stopping him. "Thank you for not fighting him or running away, but you can’t taunt him either, which you know perfectly well was your intention when you opened the car door." He had the decency to look guilty. "Promise?"

"Promise," he murmured, looking like a little boy whose favorite video game had just been taken away. But then his features brightened. "Care to seal it with a kiss?"

Kira’s insides felt like mush instantly. Her annoyance melted away to make room for the butterflies now flying in her stomach. She reached up and kissed him on the lips, ending it too soon because she was afraid her parents would walk outside at any moment after all of the commotion.

"What did you come over for anyway?" she questioned, all of the sudden curious to know why he had been waiting outside her house.

"I saw you and Luke leave. I just wanted to see how everything went. Clearly, not all that well."

Kira shrugged. "Until about ten minutes ago, things were going great." She presented him with a wry smile, but he became suddenly alert and jerked his head toward her house.

"Your mom is about to come outside."

Kira’s eyes widened and she pushed him away. "Hide!"

A moment later, the front door creaked open. "Kira, honey? Is that you?"

"Yeah, Mom." Kira walked closer to the house and out of the darkness. "I’m just making a phone call, be right in."

Her mother nodded, concern flashing in her features, before retreating back inside the house.

"Movie?" Tristan asked from somewhere beyond Kira’s sight. She nodded, because what else could you do if a really hot guy asked to watch a movie with you in your bedroom? Kira knew he would sneak in silently, using all the speed and agility he could, and she prayed there were no stray pairs of underwear decorating the floor when he got there.

 

 

Chapter Fourteen

 

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