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to inherit my apparent birthright and kill some vampires…love, Kira."

I’ve officially gone insane, she reflected while rolling over onto her side to stare at the few brown leaves dusting the ground. Autumn was a lot different in the South, a little too green for her liking. Kira wondered what it would be like to have a Christmas without snow. She would miss the New York blizzards, the slushy streets, and the cursing pedestrians slipping down the subway steps or marching Prada boots through inches of snow. Rockefeller lit up at Christmas. The city came alive when the lights on the gigantic tree were switched on, and the ice skating rink was crowded at every hour of the day. She had always come home for a week during Christmas break to visit with her family, but hanging ornaments on a plastic tree never felt right. Kira used to love coming home to her dorm where her roommate Sarah and she would decorate a blue spruce pine tree.

But, Kira sighed as she sat up, she had more pressing concerns.

Luke said it would be easy, like breathing, eventually. She wondered if maybe it was just too late. She took psychology back at boarding school, and she remembered learning about human development. The first few stages of life are the most important. If you don’t learn to speak by the time you’re four, you probably never will. Babies are born curious and learn far more than adults do. Maybe she had just missed out on her chance.

Enough ruminating, Kira mentally shook herself. She needed to learn this.

Luke finally reemerged from his home and carried over two lemonades. Kira gladly accepted. The mix of cold and sweet instantly refreshed her, and she turned to Luke, waiting to hear his thoughts.

"So…basically, you’re a freak."

"Hey!"

He threw his hands up in defense.

"Kidding! I just don’t think the way I was taught as a boy is going to do anything for you. Your body doesn’t react, doesn’t know its own potential. We need to like, awaken you first."

"Okay, creepy much?"

"I just mean, we need to find some sort of trigger so you can start to remind your body how it’s supposed to work."

"Well, how did you learn? Maybe if you tell me a little bit about the procedure, I’ll understand."

Luke sat down next to her on the grass, sipping his lemonade and staring deep into the ebony woods.

"It’s hard to explain I guess."

"Try," she said, not letting him off the hook at all. This was all his idea anyway. Well, not technically, but still.

"When you’re little, the teaching is less about learning how to bring the fire out and more about learning how to stop it and control it. Ever since I can remember, I would think of the fire, and it would come. Easy as pie. The hard part was controlling it."

"So, it’ll be doubly difficult for me." She ran a hand through her hair, exasperated. "Fantastic."

"One of the main reasons conduit communities live in such seclusion is to protect the children who have no control. The fire doesn’t hurt humans or even inanimate objects, only vampires. So, theoretically, it would be safe to live anywhere. But babies just release energy all the time without any warning and suddenly there’s a streak of fire soaring through the air like a cannonball until an adult catches it and sucks it back into themselves. Obviously, if we lived in human communities, people would start to catch on to the strangeness."

"Will I ever be allowed to see that?" Kira asked, vulnerable. She wished she could have grown up in such a place, totally accepted by everyone.

"I hope so. Sonnyville was like nothing you’ve ever seen. I miss it sometimes."

"Why’d you come here, Luke? Why’d you take on this mission?" Kira had wondered it for a while. Who would willingly enroll in high school to basically babysit the one person who could potentially destroy the world? Nobody wanted that kind of pressure.

"Because it was my duty."

"That can’t be the only reason. You’re not one to blindly follow orders. Remember, I dated a Protector in New York, and he was nothing like you. Had he said duty, I would have believed him, but you don’t like to always follow the rules."

"You mean Cy?" She nodded. "I spoke with him before coming here. He told me how little you knew, how he suspected you would need someone to look out for you. He did care about you, in his own extremely stuffy way."

"And you pitied me?"

"A little." Luke shrugged. He was trying to be completely honest with her. "A lot of it was the fact that this was such an important duty, and important missions are hardly ever granted to someone as young as me. Part of it was my competition. One other boy in my town, Nick, fit the bill. But he was a hard ass and no fun. I knew he’d never befriend you unless necessary. I knew he wouldn’t provide the support a girl in your situation would need. And you know me." He broke his far-off stare to smile at her. "I can’t resist a damsel in distress." He lowered his voice to a spooky imitation of Dracula. "Now, try to light me on fire if you dare...mwahahaha."

Kira stood, ignoring Luke’s impression of an evil mastermind, and got right back down to business.

"So, I need a trigger."

"Yup."

"Any idea what kind?" Luke shook his head with a sly smile. He waved her closer and she hesitantly walked over while he turned around. She moved closer to his back, wondering what the heck was going on, when he turned around and lunged at her.

Luke grabbed her by the throat, knocking her to the ground, and she saw teeth protruding past his lips. He sunk his head closer, so the teeth started to poke her neck, and Kira felt trapped. She couldn’t move under the weight of his body and had no weapon to fight him off with. Desperation heated her veins, and a flood of warmth surged through her body. She started shivering from the temperature difference between her molten core and the cool breeze brushing her skin. Kira willed the fire to seep out, anything to stop the unbearable scorching of her heart.

Suddenly, she burst, the same way she had in the auditorium. Her hands burned and Kira opened her eyes despite the pain. Luke smiled, and the waves of sun rolled past him, leaving him unharmed. Kira felt like a river that had just been set free from a dam. There was no way to stop the waves of power bursting forth.

"Control it!" Luke yelled over the crackling fire.

Kira told it to stop. The flood started slowly calming, and she curved her fingers toward her palm, trapping the light in a viselike grip. Finally, the last bit of light burned out, and Kira almost expected smoke to seep from her palms.

Instead, Luke trapped her in a hug and swung her around. "That was incredible! I was even pushed back a little from your power, which is really hard to do, trust me. You’re really strong. You don’t even know how strong. It’s like there’s no limit to how much light you can channel. I never felt it waver until you wanted it to. People usually only last for five or ten minutes, maybe less at full force."

Kira swiveled. "How long was I going for?"

"Like half an hour. It was incredible."

"Oh my god." Kira sat down. "That felt like thirty seconds to me."

"It’s okay, the timing will come with the control. But for now at least, we know your trigger." She looked up at him expectantly. "Well, duh. No offense, but clearly, being scared is the only thing that brings the power out in you. We’ll fix it. Don’t worry."

"How?" She looked up at him, noticing how the sun silhouetted his features, it almost looked like he wore a golden crown.

"I mean, I can’t always run around jumping on you with fake fangs. That was just a one-time deal. You’re okay, right? I got a little into the moment." His eyes peered toward her throat.

Kira reached her hand to her neck. She felt completely fine. There was no bruise even though it felt like he had choked her pretty badly. "Is it possible that channeling also acts as a cure?"

"Not that I’ve ever heard of." He was intrigued, she could tell.

"I never mentioned this before, but in the auditorium, I was hit with a brick, and my leg was bleeding really badly, and Diana cut my face. But afterward, when I came back to your place, all the cuts had closed. They seemed to have disappeared. I just assumed it was another side effect, like the burns."

Luke grabbed her shoulders, staring her down. "Are you certain?" She nodded. "Don’t tell anyone. I don’t know what it means, but it is most definitely not normal."

"I promise, I won’t tell. I don’t even have anyone to tell." She shook free of his hold and tried to laugh it off. Just another way she was different, dangerous. Kira sighed.

"So what now? How do we keep practicing?"

"Try to think of things that scare you, and see if anything happens."

"Like what? Spiders?"

"Maybe? I don’t know. This is new to me too. Just try to make yourself scared to death." Kira rolled her eyes. She just had to scare the life out of herself. How simple.

Kira tried thinking of spiders, but nothing happened. She thought of their hairy legs, the clicking of sharp mucous covered fangs and sticky webs trapping her alive. Nothing.

Next she thought of flying, picturing turbulence so rough her butt picked up off the seat, and the overhead compartments fell open. She pictured oxygen masks falling from the ceiling, the plane spinning circles in the air to eventually crash in the Pacific Ocean where she would drown in the cockpit or escape to be eaten alive by great white sharks.

Not even a flush developed on her skin.

Finally Kira thought of the worst thing possible, a scene out of Scream where a knife waving psycho chased her through her house killing off her friends and popping out of closets.

Nada. All Kira had managed to do was give herself the heebie-jeebies since she and Luke were totally alone in the middle of nowhere, a place no one could hear her scream. Kira shivered.

"This isn’t working. I’m just freaking myself out."

"Keep trying. This has to work. It’s the only way you’ll learn any control and be able to do anything aside from fending off a vamp right when it’s about to bite you. That method is way too risky."

Suddenly, Kira had an idea.

She looked back at the rock, focusing on the lines of color formed by sunlight and shadow. Toward the bottom, the hard surface turned black and she stared into the abyss, letting her eyes lose focus and start to blur, until an image from her subconscious took over—Diana.

Kira imagined the moment when Diana leaned in to sink her teeth into Kira’s flesh, the uncontrollable fear she had felt as death crept closer. How she looked at Tristan and in that moment realized he could do nothing to save her, that each of them was helpless. Kira waited for the pinprick of teeth on her neck, felt the tiniest pinch before…and then Kira felt it—her strength was gathering.

Heat flowed to her palm, and, for the first time, it felt as though she called it. She pulled at the tendrils of fire with her mind, willing them to surge through her veins, accepting the pain and focusing on the darkness she was trying to dissipate. Her palms burned as the flares broke through her skin and flooded Luke’s backyard.

She lost whatever hold she had had for those few seconds and started sweating under the relentless surge. Distantly, she heard a man’s voice calling at her, telling her to stop, telling her to rein it in, but some sort of monster had awoken inside of Kira. Like an out of body experience, she felt her legs give out, felt the grass crunch against her cheek, but all the while her hands aimed out toward the rock. New hands lifted her, surrounded her. Her palms pressed against something hard, and the light drained away, seeping into a different source.

Slowly, Kira’s vision began to return. She focused on her slightly glowing fingernails where they pressed up against soft cotton. Strings of light danced between her knuckles, trying to escape the suction cup hold of her hands against Luke’s chest. Kira noticed for the first time that the light was sinking into him, weaving into his chest, and leaving