Kira slowly shut the door of her room and tiptoed to her parents' bedroom. The door was open, and Kira peeked inside, it was empty. She frowned and walked silently down the stairs. The living room was also empty. A sigh of relief escaped her lips, she didn't have to sneak out to avoid her parents. She picked up an apple and saw a note on the dining table.
'Emergency meeting. We still need to talk. Love, Mom and Dad'
"Another emergency meeting?" Kira mumbled. She wondered what it was about. Not that she would ever know, Mark and Carolien would never tell her. At least not after talking and Kira wasn't planning to do that.
Kira took out her phone and saw that Jade had texted her last night. Jade told her the day before that she had to come over to talk. The text said that Kira could come over at two and at the moment it was ten in the morning. Kira hid her phone, threw away the apple and left the living room. She closed the door behind her, stretched her arms and legs, straightened her training clothes. Kira jumped off the porch and started running.
She ran and didn't stop; she had no destination. She passed her school, the cinema, the dinner and the mall in Rose Hills. She ran with her lips in a hard line and her eyebrows frowned, trying so hard not to think, but to just run. She kept running even when she felt her knees trembling and her chest hurting. Kira ran all the way back and let herself fall on the porch and lay on her back for a few minutes. She opened her eyes and looked upon the clear blue sky and looked into the bright sun. She turned her head away, as her eyes could not take the brightness anymore and stared at the moon that was still visible.
The moon.
Eleanor was going to turn tonight, and she wasn't going to be with her. Kira rolled over on her side facing the door, with her back to the world. She lay her head on the hard plaster around her arm and remembered Eleanor turning. The images of Eleanor's bones and muscles moving under her skin would never leave Kira's mind, just like her screams. Kira took a deep breath and convinced herself that being with the pack was the best for Eleanor. She would be surrounded with her own people. People who were like her, who understood her and who could help her. Kira slightly shivered with disgust.
Out of the corner of her eye, Kira saw a shadow behind her, and it grabbed her at her shoulder. Kira turned around and had the guy in her grip. He lay on the steps of the porch while Kira pushed her plastered forearm on his throat.
"Dom?" Kira said baffled.
"Kira," he breathed with big eyes pointing at her arm that was still chocking him.
Kira took her arm back and rubbed her plaster as if it had feeling. She looked up at him and saw a worried face looking back at her. She quickly touched her cheeks and sighed of relief. She hadn't cried. In all the years she and Dominic had been friends, he had never seen her cry.
"Why are you here?" she asked him.
He looked down at her broken arm. "I'm here for you," he said and took her arm. "What happened?"
"I jumped."
Dominic looked at her, he didn't know what she was talking about.
"I jumped the gap at school with Jack."
Dominic was first shocked, but then anger flushed over his face. "He let you jump? He jumped with you?" Dominic asked. "He told me you two hung out yesterday, but of course he left out that little detail."
"I just broke my arm, Dom. I'm okay."
"No, you're not," Dominic said straight forward.
Kira's walls turned into glass and seeing through them wasn't enough for Dominic, so he broke them.
Kira parted her lips, she wanted to say something back, but for the first time she had no come back. With all the knowledge in her head, she had no come back.
"Yes, you just broke your arm." Dominic started when he knew Kira wasn't going to say something. "But you are not okay. I am not okay. We are all not okay." Dominic swallowed before he continued. "But like I said, I am here for you, Kira. Talk to me."
Kira looked into his sweet brown eyes; he was begging her. She wanted to push him and run away, but she didn't. He was right, they weren't okay. He needed her, so she stayed.
"I don't know what to say." Kira shrugged. "This sucks. Everything sucks so much."
"I know."
"No, you don't know. For you and Jade this is all new. I have grown up with this, Dom. But now everything has changed, and I don't know what to do. I don't even know what side I am on anymore."
Dominic tilted his head, he was listening.
"My parents have betrayed me, and Eleanor has left. The Government is corrupt, and I am a killer."
"You are not a killer, Kira."
"In my dreams I am. You have no idea what I have done."
The images of her holding a cold silver knife against Eleanor's chest, right above her heart, appeared before her eyes again. She looked away from those ocean green eyes, she couldn't look into them while taking her life.
"And Eleanor hasn't left you," Dominic said, bringing her mind back to the porch. "And she won't either."
"She needs them more than she needs me."
"She will always need you more, Kira. You two are sisters."
Kira looked up at him, holding her tears. She smiled at Dominic and thanked him. Kira didn't know she needed to hear that, but she did, and she was thankful that Dominic was the one telling her. Kira beckoned her head to the door and they both crawled towards it and leaned against it, watching the street. They sat next to each other, their arms touching, but no romantic feelings. That was the past, a past that seemed like centuries ago.
"How are you and Jade holding up?" Kira asked, it was his turn to open up. Something he did easily.
"Jade is holding up fine. She kind of scares me now and then, but she is okay."
Kira raised an eyebrow.
"I don't know. She is still the same, but also different you know." Dominic had to think. "She just has a different look on her face. Like that actress. It is like she has a plan in motion to conquer the world." Dominic chuckled softly and shrugged. "Which she can totally do, she is really powerful, and she needs to learn to control herself," he said, thinking of the green fire in her eyes. The fire that had to be controlled.
They looked upon the empty street.
"I still love her though," he said, and his eyes widened.
Kira looked at him and knew he had never said those words out loud.
"You love her?" Kira asked with a huge smile.
Dominic bit his lip and smiled. "I do."
"That is great," Kira said and patted him on the knee. "It really is," Kira told him and rested her head on his shoulder. They sat in silence and got lost in their own thoughts.
Kira got out of her bathroom and found Dominic sitting on her bed, the picture of her and Eleanor was standing on her nightstand again. Dominic had his arms crossed in front of him as if he was not the one who put it back. Kira stepped out, wearing jeans and a black shirt.
"I was mad," Kira explained.
Dominic just nodded in response.
"Come on, let's go," she said and beckoned her head to the door. Dominic jumped up and they left her bedroom, Kira felt his eyes sting in her back while they walked down the stairs. He watched her every move, she thought it was annoying. She was the one who looked after and took care of her friends, not the other way around.
Kira took of her ripped jacket off the peg and put it on, or tried to put it on. Her plastered arm didn't want to get in even though she had cut her jacket. Dominic jumped in to help her.
"No," Kira mumbled. Dominic ignored her and tried to rip the jacket a bit more. "Dom, stop!"
Dominic took a step back and looked at her in silence. "I don't need your help," Kira hissed and aggressively pushed her plastered arm through the hole.
Dominic put his hands in the air and gestured not to have touched her. "Okay."
Kira opened the door for him and closed the door behind them. He picked up his bike, got on it and she gestured him to bike, she would jump to get on the back. Dominic biked and Kira sat behind him.
"I'm sorry," she said softly, secretly hoping he wouldn't hear her.
"It's okay," he said.
Kira jumped off when they reached Jade's house and Dominic leaned his bike against the fence.
"Wait." Kira stopped Dominic before he could ring the bell. "Are her parents home?" she asked, remembering the damage she had done the last time she saw the Evans. Dominic chuckled, shook his head and rang the bell. Jade had opened the door before Dominic had his arm next to him again.
"Hey," she said in a calm voice.
Kira smiled in response and took her up. She indeed had a different look on her face, as if she hadn't had her morning coffee yet and saying the wrong thing could make her explode. Jade had her long black hair lying over her shoulders, it looked like she hadn't brushed it yet. She was wearing a white top and pink leggings. The more Kira looked at her, the more she looked like her real father.
"Come on in," Jade said, and let her friends enter her home.
Jade immediately led the way upstairs to her bedroom. She opened the door to her room and Kira was stunned, it wasn't the light, neat and organized room she remembered. It was dark and messy instead and when she entered, she got hit by feelings. The room was a mess of emotions. Jade sat down on the floor, the place where she had been since she found out she was a witch, Kira guessed. She was surrounded by pens, papers, food and the book her father had given her. Dominic walked past Kira as if it was all normal and joined Jade on the floor. The couple looked up at Kira. She frowned and sat across them.
"I see what you have been doing with your time," Kira said trying to lighten to mood.
"If you mean eating junk food, overusing my brain and wanting to break things all the time, then yes."
Dominic picked up the new leather-bound book and handed it to Kira. "We have been reading it, translated some of it and tried some of the spells out. That's why you felt... whatever you felt when you entered the room."
"Translated? Is it not in English?" Kira asked and opened the book to find... nothing. The page was blank. She looked at another page to also find it blank. She looked up at her friends and back down at the book, another page, again blank. "What is this?" she asked annoyed.
Jade and Dominic looked at each other and back at Kira. "Can't you see?" Dominic asked.
"See what? The pages are blank."
"The book is protecting itself," Jade said with a small voice.
"From me?" Kira asked offended and looked down at the book. "Why?"
Jade put her hand in a bag of dried banana chips. "You are hesitating, Kira. You still don't know who to trust," Jade said without much emotion and put chips in her mouth.
"Can you see?" Kira asked Dominic. He nodded. "Well, of course I am still hesitating. I don't know enough to make a choice!"
Jade took her book and read the title Kira couldn't see. "Confidere," she said. "It means 'To trust' in..."
"In Latin. I know," Kira interrupted her. "Why Latin?" she asked, trying to ignore the fact that the book didn't trust her. That the book didn't want her to see its content, that she wasn't worthy.
"Magic is an old thing, all the spells are in Latin or other dead languages," Dominic explained.
Kira looked at him, she felt anger towards him because he could read the book. Kira looked back at Jade. "What am I doing here if I everything is blank for me?"
"To update you," Jade started. "My dad didn't just write his spells down; he also wrote experiences he had and things he heard. It's a spell book and a diary."
"It has information that will make you trust, Kira. To make a choice, the right choice. To make you stop hesitating," Dominic said carefully.
Jade gathered some of the papers that surrounded them and gave them to Kira to read. Kira was glad to see Jade hadn't lost her neat handwriting.
"I hope you can read it," Jade said shyly.
"We wanted to type first, but then I remembered you told me The Government has control over everything," Dominic explained.
Kira nodded. "Good, good that you remembered, or we would have been screwed."
Kira started to scan through the papers.
"In Mexico I ran into a werecoyote. I ran into one werecoyote because The Government had killed its pack. The young man The boy survived by covering himself in the blood of his alpha, the woman who had practically raised him. He told me his pack hurt no people, they all had the power to control themselves when the moon hit its apex."
Kira shook her head in disbelief and skimmed through the second paper.
". . . running next to the road to not get lost. I knew I shouldn't have helped them, but I couldn't leave them. The little hybrid held tightly on to me when we were running away from the hunters. Her parents led the way, they were much faster. If it wasn't for the invisibility spell I casted on myself and the girl, we would have been both dead."
"Hybrids are real?" Kira muttered.
"Both her parents were werewolves, but somehow she also had the powers of a witch," Dominic said fascinated.
"I... I never knew that was possible."
"The hunters were looking for the girl."
"The Government did," Jade said.
Kira put the papers down. She didn't need to read all the horrible things The Government had done.
"So, every government is corrupt indeed," Kira stated.
"They say that for a reason, Kira." Dominic smiled half at her. "There must be something we can do about it."
Kira laughed. "You want to do something about it? You want to change the fact that we are killers?"
Jade looked worriedly when Kira said 'we'.
"It's too late for that." The words rolled softly over her lips. Kira saw the images of her parents and brother killing roll before her eyes. She had watched them to learn.
"You haven't killed yet, Kira," Dominic said, trying to make her not feel as horribly as she did.
In my dreams I have! Kira wanted to scream. "I have to go home," she said instead.
Jade saw Kira glimpse at the book and look away madly. She knew Kira still couldn't read it. She still hesitated.
"I'll walk with you," Dominic said and got up.
"No." Kira stopped him. "I have to run and think."
Dominic and Jade exchanged a quick look, but Kira didn't notice. "Kira, you haven't trained this much in weeks. Take care of yourself first."
Kira mumbled and left her friends. She sped down the stairs and shut the door behind her. She didn't run immediately. She had to breathe, she felt suffocated in Jade's room; not only by the emotions that resided in the room, but also by the new information and their worried looks.
Kira took a deep breath and started running, running towards her home, but not sure yet if she was going to stop there. She had to think. She could not hesitate. But how could she not hesitate after her whole life thinking she was doing good. Killing supernatural beings, because they hurt people. But she knew now that there were good supernatural beings. She was best friends with one. But people came first. The people must be protected.
I shouldn't be hesitating, Kira told herself. The Government was hunting down and killing innocent beings. That was wrong.
Kira chuckled. We can't do a thing to change the workings of The Government. She remembered Dominic's face when he asked what they could do about it. Nothing. That was the answer. They couldn't crash a meeting or something and tell them to stop.
Or could they?
If they didn't, someone else would. Someone like supernatural beings who were tired to be hunted down.