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all the while keeping her arm outstretched, creating a wall of flames behind the two of them—one that was weakening with each passing second.

"I can’t hold it for long. Undo the chains now, Tristan!" She cradled his face with her free hand, trying to split her attention.

"It’s no use. I can’t. I’ve been trying. You have to run, Kira, now, before Diana has the chance to grab you. Go to your car and just start driving as far away as possible."

Kira shook her head. Tristan opened his mouth to argue, but she covered it with a kiss, breaking it off when her power weakened further. She pulled Tristan into a hug instead, looking past his shoulder at the three cowering vampires waiting for her shield to fall so they could pounce. Kira shifted her gaze to the sky, where the sun was now more than half covered by the black hole of the moon. The earth was being steeped in shadow, and even her light was dimming in the process. Slowly, like a ticking time bomb, the power seeped from her, until finally it winked out.

The total eclipse had come.

"I love you," was all Kira had time to whisper before hands grabbed her shoulders, throwing her like a rag doll away from Tristan. She landed, hearing the crunch of her ankle as a fierce shot of pain traveled up her spine, and let out a scream. Kira was satisfied that she at least had a moment with Tristan, a small sliver of time to say goodbye and to tell him she loved him. It was the first time those words had passed her lips, and Diana could never take that away.

"Kira, Kira, Kira," Diana purred and stomped her foot down on Kira’s chest, holding her to the ground and crushing her. "You should have listened to them both, because now it’s too late to escape."

Luke ran over and jumped at Diana, reaching out his hands to strangle her. Diana backhanded him like a fly. He sailed away, smacking into the porch and landing on the ground with a thud. He didn’t stir from the spot where he landed, and Kira screamed again. She stared transfixed at his immobile body, flailing her limbs like a mad woman trying to escape Diana’s hold. Luke was dying, she was sure of it. She needed to hold him, to help him somehow.

Kira used all her strength, but she couldn’t budge Diana’s foot. It was useless, and instead of helping Luke, she was just hurting herself. Kira prayed, for what seemed like her first true prayer in ages, that Luke was alive—knocked unconscious, but alive.

Diana seemed to sense Kira’s fading hope, because she reached down for a fistful of Kira’s hair and used it to drag her across the yard, dropping her in front of Tristan. Kira refused to make a sound even though it felt as though her head were ripping free of her body. The pain was excruciating, but even still, she wouldn’t let Diana win.

Jerome and John were holding Tristan again, but this time Jerome’s hand was clenched over Tristan’s mouth to stop him from uttering a word.

"Time’s up, Kira," Diana whispered.

And before Kira could move, Diana’s teeth sank into Kira’s neck and her blood flowed freely into the vampire’s system. She heard the gurgling of her own blood, felt the warm liquid seep down her spine where droplets spilled free of Diana’s lips. She heard Tristan struggle and scream protests even through Jerome’s hand, but Diana wouldn’t stop.

"Enough." Jerome’s deep voice startled Kira from the pain and the weakness spreading through her body from blood loss. Diana’s head jerked up, freeing Kira. "The time for games is done. We must use her to fix Tristan."

Fix him? Kira thought. He doesn’t want to be evil!

She wanted to scream the words at them, but Kira couldn’t find the strength to speak. Her limbs felt like butter. They wouldn’t do as she commanded, and Diana held her still.

John pulled a glass cup from his pocket and Diana took it. Kira barely registered the cool touch against her skin, but when they pulled the cup away a minute later, it was full to the brim with her blood. Jerome reached his hand down, soaking one of his fingers, and licked it clean with a flash of pleasure.

Kira’s only hope was that they would lose control, that one of them would end her quickly before they had a chance to change Tristan. If all hope was lost for her, she wanted him to at least be spared.

But as quickly as that thought came, it passed, because John took the cup, jerked Tristan’s head back by his forehead and let her blood flow freely into his forcibly opened mouth. Kira saw him struggle, shaking his limbs against the chains, trying desperately to escape, and she wondered if he could fight the pull of her blood. Maybe all this time, Diana had been right—Kira would be Tristan’s undoing.

His body started to slump as the glass emptied. Jerome refilled it, passing it back to John, and this time, Tristan didn’t move while it was poured. When the third cup was filled, Tristan strained his head up, arching to get all of Kira’s blood, swallowing it willingly, and even in her weakened state, Kira knew a change had occurred.

Diana let Kira fall to the ground and walked over to Tristan’s side. They undid his chains and he stood quickly, faster than Kira’s eyes could process it. Her blood had strengthened his body. He stretched his arms over his head, the muscles of his stomach flexing with the movement, and he cracked his neck bones before leaning forward to look at Kira. All the fight left Kira’s body the moment their eyes met.

Tristan was gone.

A sob escaped her lips and tears dropped quickly from her eyes the longer she stared into his, which had become as hard as stone and colder than ice. She had never seen him look at her that way, like less than food, like vermin, even since the first time they had met. His pupils dilated, so the blue of his irises were almost paper thin. His fangs were extended, blood dripped from his lips and he licked it away, smiling the entire time. He hugged Diana, gave her a deep kiss, bit her, and then shoved her away, chuckling at her hurt expression. Quick as a bullet, he ripped Jerome’s T-shirt free of his body and used the rag to wipe the blood from his chest.

Then, as an afterthought, Tristan leaned over Kira, licking her open wound. With her blood fresh on his lips, he said, "Aren’t you going to run?"

Kira found the strength to back up. Diana she could handle, Jerome and John she could handle, but this Tristan was more than she could stand. How had her blood changed him so much? He was more than animal. He was evil and she was the reason he had changed. Kira stood, swaying on her woozy feet, trying not to feel stabbing pains in her heart as he laughed at her struggles.

"Tristan?" she asked meekly, reaching her hand out as if she could recover some trace of the man she had lost.

"Yes, honey?" Tristan smiled, blood staining his white teeth. The word honey felt like a slap in Kira’s face.

The sky confirmed what she felt in her bones. The eclipse was still complete. There would be no refuge in her power. With one last look at Tristan, one final gaze to see if he was acting, one final search of the lines of his face for some sign, Kira turned and ran away from the sound of the man she loved laughing in the face of her death.

"I’ll give you a head start, little Kira," Tristan called. She winced as he used the name Diana had condescendingly called her but charged on into the woods beyond her neighbor’s backyard, into the darkness where the eclipse had stolen every hint of light that ever previously existed.

Kira limped on the ankle she was sure she had broken. With each step, a knife seemed to pierce her leg. She was dizzy from the blood loss and her vision receded, warping into a tunnel, letting her see only the leaves directly in front of her. Kira tripped on tree roots and leaned against giant trunks to stabilize herself. She stopped for a moment to catch her breath before pounding forward again. Self-preservation was all Kira thought about. Her instincts had taken over because her thoughts had become too much to handle. All she could do was concentrate on running as far as she possibly could.

And then she heard the cackling—a shrieking, high-pitched noise, right behind her. A finger, one she knew must belong to Diana, poked her back, sending her flying forward, and Kira kept running. A hand gently caressed her cheek, another slapped at her arm, another pulled on her hair, and Kira knew there was no escape. She felt like millions of ghosts were pawing at her, invisible but tangible, and Kira just stopped, tired of all the games, ready to see if this Tristan was so changed that he was willing to kill her.

"I’m done," Kira said to the empty clearing she stood in the middle of, knowing all four of them were close enough to hear. To keep herself going, she had to think of Tristan as a thing. Not as the human she knew, but as the vampire she needed to kill.

"That’s no fun." Diana pouted and emerged from the shadows.

A hand clenched down on Kira’s shoulder and spun her around. She stared directly into Tristan’s face. He fangs popped out and he leaned down to her neck to finish the job. Kira pounded her fists against his chest, trying in vain to hurt him, but he stilled her easily.

Kira waited to feel his teeth puncture her skin and drain the life from her. She knew that the real Tristan would never go through with it and hoped he was in there somewhere, fighting the bloodlust her cells had created within him.

Her body involuntarily jerked when instead of teeth, his cheek gently caressed hers and he breathed in the smell of her hair—something he loved to do when they were lying side by side in her bed and he thought she was asleep. Kira bit her lip to keep from smiling. If this was a trick, it was the cruelest one of all, because before she even realized it, Kira let herself believe Tristan had been fooling them all the entire time.

When his lips brushed against the sensitive skin just below her ear and she heard him say, "I love you, too," Kira allowed herself to smile.

A moment later, Tristan pushed her to the side to punch the now charging Diana in the face.

Kira’s legs collapsed and she sank down to the ground, all her strength gone. For the next minute, all Kira could do was watch as Tristan, rejuvenated and fortified by her blood, threw three vampires around like rag dolls. They all ignored Kira, too caught up in their anger at Tristan for tricking them. Thunder sounded every time one of their bodies flew into a tree trunk, snapping the bark and causing the forest to wobble on its foundations.

Kira looked up, past the tallest branch, through the swaying leaves, at the sun. An ebony circle covered the suns surface, but a halo of light stretched past the shadow, fighting to touch back down to earth. After the excruciating wait, the few minutes of total eclipse had passed. Kira felt more than saw the moon move a fraction to the side. No visible change had occurred, but with Kira’s connection to the sun, everything had altered within her.

With her hands behind her back, Kira brought a flame to life and used her power to heal her. The electric current raced through her veins, multiplying her blood cells, closing the cuts that streaked across her skin from the branches she had struck while fleeing, reconnecting the bones that had shattered in her ankle. And, most of all, the two little puncture holes at her neck sealed shut without a scar.

Kira jumped up, bringing her hands forward, and shot flames at John, who had failed to taste her blood. He would not be immune in the slightest, and quickly, Kira let the stream arch up in the sky and circle down, encasing him from above. For John, there was nowhere to run. Kira stopped paying attention to Tristan’s fight, letting John have her full attention. She still lacked the control over using her protective powers versus killing powers, and before Kira knew it, John had collapsed into a pile of burning ash.

Kira looked at the sky. There