Ignite as Told by Luke and Tristan Page 3

  And don't miss the brand new spinoff series, Midnight Ice, telling the story of Pandora Scott—a vampire thief on the run! The first book, Frost, takes place after the events in Midnight Fire. Kira, Luke, and Tristan all make special appearances throughout the course of the book!

  Even the hottest love can turn a girl cold-blooded...

  Life's tough for a vampire thief on the run—just ask Pandora Scott, she knows. Four years ago she ran away from home after everyone she loved betrayed her. But now her annoyingly grown up (and handsome) ex boyfriend is stalking her, begging her to return. A mysterious vamp with a particularly dangerous (and sexy) stare keeps popping unexpectedly into her life. The extremely powerful head vampire of New York is hunting her down because she may (or may not) have broken into his highly-secure, highly-secretive personal vault. And the fate she's been trying to outrun? Well, it's about to catch up. Because even a super-speedy vamp with the ability to disappear can't escape her own destiny.

  Keep reading for a free preview of Frost!

  Chapter One

  When Pandora Scott woke on the morning of her twentieth birthday, she knew there’d be no cake, no flickering candles waiting to be blown out with a wish, no presents to rip open, no friendly voices teasing her in song, no cards waiting in the mail slot downstairs.

  Because Pandora Scott didn’t have friends.

  She didn’t have family.

  And even though she was immortal, she didn’t have time for birthdays.

  There would, however, be other things she liked. Blood. Threats. Danger. And lots and lots of money. An entire bathtub full. So much she could wipe her butt with the stuff without giving a damn. Not that she’d keep it all, but…

  The alarm on her nightstand started beeping.

  “I’m up, I’m up,” she grumbled, speaking to herself as she slapped her hand down on the plastic clock, annoyed to be pulled from such a glorious train of thought—on her birthday, no less! But in her haste, she smashed the thing completely to pieces.

  Somehow, the broken bits kept beeping.

  “Oh, come on.” She groaned, fangs sliding out with her frustration. After forming a fist, she pounded the alarm to dust and then rolled over, opening her eyes just enough to take in the world outside her window.

  Two months in New York, and it was the eighth clock she’d smashed.

  This city was definitely getting to her.

  And yet…

  Pandora smiled, hand still covered in plastic shards as she closed her eyes, blissfully listening to the hustle and bustle taking place outside. New York was loud and busy, especially for a person with supernaturally enhanced hearing. Cars honked every second of the day. Pigeons squawked. People spoke nonstop—in their apartments, in restaurants, walking down the street. There was no peace and no quiet, but Pandora loved it. Because there was so much room to pretend, so many lives to lose herself in, so many places a girl could go to forget.

  The enclave had been different.

  Isolated.

  Highly secure.

  Inescapable.

  She’d grown up in the middle of the woods, far off the main roads, tucked in a valley in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. But the enclave had needed to be hidden to keep her people concealed from normal human life, to keep their secrets safe. The ancient Greeks had first called them titans. The original gods. The creators of all things.

  They weren't. Not even close. But the name had stuck.

  Titans.

  In the ancient times, they'd wanted to be treated as gods among men. Almost every culture referenced them in some way. The Greek god Zeus. The Aztec god Camaxtli. The Roman goddess Minerva. The Celtic god Alator. The Egyptian god Seth. The list went on. They had once been the kings and queens of wars and hunts, of strength and immortality, of power. And they'd let themselves fade into myth, into legend. Because they were never meant to be gods or celebrities or saints. Thousands of years ago, they'd been given power beyond belief for one purpose and one purpose alone—to protect mankind from the evils it didn't even know existed.

  Werefolk.

  Witches.

  Demons.

  Fae.

  And a hundred other supernaturals whispered about in storybooks.

  Pandora had been born to protect mankind, raised to use her power for good, bred to join the Order of Othrys—the titan police force that kept the peace all across the globe, in every continent, every country. Not all supernaturals were evil, but as the saying went, when they were good, they were very, very good, and when they were bad, they were horrid. If any creature anywhere stepped out of line, threatening people's safety, they'd face a titan soon enough. And they'd lose.

  But I’m not a titan, not anymore, Pandora corrected with a frown, sliding her tongue over the sharp canines that extended past her lip, hungry for the only thing her body now craved—blood. She hadn’t been one of them for a long time.

  Four years ago, she’d left the enclave—she’d run away, not sparing even a second to glance behind, because she’d never fit with the titans anyway. The Order of Othrys was divided into twelve segments of power. There were trackers, hunters, bolters, and other groups tasked with capturing any misbehaving supernaturals. There were mindbenders and readers, groups responsible for making sure the supernatural world remained totally secret and separate from the human realm. There were others, like the alchemists, who could manipulate the natural world, or the archivists, who could pass memories between generations to keep titan secrets safe. And then, there was Pandora.

  She’d never belonged.

  Her powers had never fit into any titan category. And because they couldn’t make her fit, they’d turned their backs on her instead—they’d abandoned her long before she’d ever abandoned them. So when she turned sixteen, the official age a titan was supposed to be initiated into the Order of Othrys, she’d done the only thing she could—one final act of rebellion against a people who’d never wanted her anyway. She became one of the very things that titans protected human beings against.

  A vampire.

  Let’s not think about home, she urged silently, blinking away her dark thoughts, fighting to clear her mind. Only happy things on my birthday, like the informant I’m about to meet, the money I’m about to make, all the people I’m about to piss off. Happy, happy things.

  With a deep breath, she stood up, shaking her head, clearing it of all things from her life before. This was her life now. And in this life, no one cared that today was her twentieth birthday, no one cared about her sob story, no one cared about excuses. They cared about punctuality and results, which meant she had somewhere she needed to be.

  Because Pandora wasn't just a vampire.

  She was a vampire thief.

  A very good, very in-demand, very infamous vampire thief… At least, she liked to think so. And there was someone she was late to meet, someone who was paying her quite a lot of money to do what she did best—piss a really powerful vampire off.

  Who would she be pissing off this time?

  Multiple vamps, most likely. She'd only been in New York for about two months, but the list of people who wanted to murder her was already pretty long. Not that it mattered, of course. Plenty of people wanted her dead.

  That's just what happens when you break into the Oval Office, steal a painting from the president, and leave an IOU on his personal stationery for the Secret Service to find.

  Pandora grinned as she pulled a white cotton T-shirt from where it had been hanging on her bedpost and slid it over her slim ivory shoulders.

  Worth it.

  And it had been.

  Because she'd stolen that painting for the head vampire of Washington, DC, in return for protection against the head vampire of Los Angeles, who, well, wanted to kill her for sneaking into his dungeons and freeing a handful of his prisoners. That particular job had been pro bono, of course. Pandora had been following the LA jerk for a few days, working on a different paid job to steal some ancient something or other f
rom his vault. But when she saw him corner a poor twelve-year-old girl, feed on her, and put her in chains, she'd decided to ditch the paying gig and focus on payback instead. Naturally.

  Such an ass, Pandora sneered inwardly, annoyed by even the memory of that slimy vamp. The poor girl had been lost and alone, without anyone to take care of her, probably just another runaway like Pandora had once been, trying to survive in an unforgiving world. Yeah, freeing her and everyone else in that prison had felt good. And stealing from that vamp, taking him down a notch? That had felt even better.

  Of course, when she saw the head vampire of DC do nearly the same thing to another lonely soul, she couldn’t help but act accordingly.

  Now, both of them wanted to kill her.

  Like she'd said—long list.

  And, well, it was only a matter of time before the head vampire of New York, Tatsuya, was added to it. Because two months in his city? That was more than enough time to piss him off. And the job she was working on today? On the outside, it was about stealing a very valuable sword from his private collection. But to Pandora, it was about sizing up the competition. Because just like the head vamp of LA and the head vamp of DC and every freaking head vamp in the entire damn world, Tatsuya had a dungeon full of forgotten prisoners somewhere in this city. And Pandora was determined to set each and every one of those innocent people free, to make sure they understood that there was at least one person who hadn’t abandoned them.

  Word on the street was that Tatsuya’s high lords were already discussing a coup, saying he was losing his touch, and the time was right to strike. The fact that she'd stolen some pretty jaw-dropping precious gems from one of Tatsuya's personal vaults probably wasn't helping, but she'd needed to test run his security and, well, announce her arrival to the city. Besides, pawning off her cut—a hefty diamond bracelet—had been more than enough to pay for her rent indefinitely. And, come on, New York was expensive—and that wasn’t even including tuition. She’d been looking into maybe taking a few classes at NYU. If, of course, she managed to stay alive for an entire semester.

  Not easy.

  But I do play the part of a college student well, she thought, looking into the mirror as she tugged an NYU sweatshirt over her head and threw on a pair of grungy jeans. The school year didn’t officially start until next week, but she already had a set of colorful pens and two blank notebooks stuffed into a messenger bag in her closet—just in case.

  It was a pipe dream, obviously.

  She’d had the same set of pens and notebooks for two years, and they were still blank, still unused. A life on the run wasn’t exactly conducive to higher education or, well, normalcy. Not that her life had ever been normal, with the titans and the enclave and the secret society...

  Ugh. Freaking birthdays, she chided, shaking her head, clearing it of all thoughts of home. Three hundred and sixty-four days out of the year, she could pretend everything was all right. But her birthday was the one day when all those darn memories tried to revolt. Which was exactly why she’d planned the meeting with her informant for this morning—she needed a distraction, fast.

  And yet, when she opened the closet to pull out a pair of Converse sneakers, completing the stereotypical college ensemble and removing all inklings of her true vampire self, the absolute last thing she needed at that moment happened. A distraction, all right, but the worst one possible.

  A picture tumbled out with the shoes.

  A picture she’d tried many times to burn but always ended up shoving in the back of her closet instead. Because even though she hadn’t seen him in four years and never planned to see him again, she couldn’t destroy the last little bit of him she had left.

  Jax.

  Jackson Rodriguez.

  Her best friend. The only boy she'd ever loved.

  The one who’d hurt her the most.

  I wonder what he looks like now, she thought, unable to pull her gaze away from the photo resting upside down on the floor. Even from this angle, his seafoam eyes jumped out of the frame, capturing her gaze, not letting go. And that smile, the one that used to make her melt, it still made her cold, dead vampire body warm just a little. He’d been scrawny and tall, long limbs with scraps of muscles, a boy still growing into a man. But a lot could change in four years.

  Against her better judgment, Pandora kneeled down and scooped the photo off the floor. Gently, she ran her fingers over the glass, still able to recall the smooth touch of his skin, hot and simmering with vibrant energy, so electric his mere presence made her nerves tingle to life. But that was how he’d always made her feel—alive, seen, noticed in a way she’d never been before.

  Pandora had been a shy, meek little girl without any friends, but what else was to be expected with strange powers that didn’t fit, a mother who’d killed herself, and a father who treated her as less than dirt, focused only on work, only on the titan mission, instead of on raising a child. During the summer of her eighth birthday, Jax and his family had moved to the enclave, and the first night they met was still burned into her brain—a single, brief moment in time that changed everything.

  Jax was playing guitar in his bedroom, softly plucking at strings, searching for notes he didn’t yet understand. And she'd turned her lights off to stare at him under cover of darkness, nose pressed against her bedroom window, mesmerized by the way his fingers moved. After half an hour, he put the instrument down gently. She'd thought he was going to bed, but instead, he reached over to his window and slid it open. Pandora had dropped to the ground, heart skipping wildly in her chest, cursing herself for not going invisible when she'd had the chance—that was her power, of course. The irony of ironies, her gift was knowing how to disappear. And normally, she was very good at it. But not that night.

  "I know you're there," Jax had said into the empty space between their houses. "I'm a tracker. I can sense you."

  She'd lifted her head just enough to look across the short space between their windows, meeting his saltwater eyes. And even though she'd heard people say there was no such thing as love at first sight, she felt her soul find a match in the depth of his irises. Even at eight, barely a girl, let alone a woman, she’d fallen for the boy next door. Hard.

  "What's your name?" he'd asked. "I'm Jax."

  She slid her window open a little farther, hesitant and scared, nervous as always. "Pandora," she murmured.

  But he heard, and he smiled, nodding as though he enjoyed the sound of it. “So, you know I’m a tracker. Which of the twelve are you?"

  Her breath had caught, because in their world, that question was as normal as breathing but her answer wasn’t. Everyone in the enclave fit into one of the twelve sections of the Order of Othrys, everyone except for her.

  "I don't know," she'd whispered, shrugging self-consciously.

  But instead of rejecting her like everyone else, instead of shying away from her otherness, Jax leaned forward. His bright eyes widened. "Really? I thought everyone knew. What can you do?"

  “Um.” She paused, pulling her bottom lip into her mouth, not wanting to ruin the moment. Her throat had been so clogged, so tight she couldn’t speak. So instead, she showed him—she disappeared. To Pandora, not much had changed, but Jax’s jaw dropped open, and his eyes popped wide as he stared at what he saw as completely empty space. Instantly too nervous to focus, Pandora lost her hold on her invisibility. She dropped her gaze to the floor, too afraid to gauge his reaction.

  But Jax hadn’t responded with fear the way everyone else in her life had, nor disgust, nor totally weirded out silence. He hadn’t backed away or closed his window or been told by an adult to leave her alone. The second she reappeared, he’d leaned closer and said this, “That is so cool!”

  “Really?” Pandora asked, eyes flicking up as she smiled for the barest moment.

  “Just think of all the trouble we can get into,” he’d said, hardly noticing her tepid response. “You’ll never get caught. Dory—oh, can I call you Dory?” Pandora nodded eagerly. A
nickname! “Well, Dory, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Don’t you?”

  One word—friendship.

  One moment.

  But it had been everything.

  Because it was the first moment she'd ever felt even an ounce of belonging.

  The moment he'd become her best friend.

  So sudden.

  So undeniable.

  Until everything changed the summer he turned sixteen.

  The summer I decided to stay fifteen forever.

  Pandora grimaced, shoving the picture frame back into the farthest corner of her closet, where it had been hidden.

  Freaking Jax!

  Freaking birthday!

  But really, she only had herself to blame. And when she stood up, Pandora paused, eyes caught by the sight of her own reflection. Same blonde hair. Same long legs. Same youthful expression. Not a thing about her appearance had changed.

  That was part of the deal, after all.

  Eternal youth.

  But other things were unrecognizable. Her spirit, for one. Her attitude, for another. Pandora had once been a meek, soft-spoken girl, one who ached to please, who wanted nothing more than to belong, who would have given anything to feel loved.

  But that girl was gone.

  She'd died four years ago.

  And she was never coming back.

  Good riddance, Pandora thought, tearing herself away from the mirror. It was almost noon. And she had somewhere she needed to be—meeting with the vampire who was paying her a lot of money to steal from Tatsuya, getting back to her real life and all the concrete plans she’d made.

  Not giving herself another second to think, Pandora crossed the small space of her studio apartment and flung open the door. She stepped outside before closing it resolutely behind her. The hallway was empty, so she took the opportunity to do her favorite thing—disappear.

  Taking a deep breath, Pandora called on the shadows. The world around her dimmed as she pulled the darkness closer, fading away from the light, as though she was looking through a black veil, slipping into a void. She had been able to retreat into the shadows, to vanish from sight, for as long as she could remember. And becoming a vampire hadn’t taken the power away—it had enhanced it. Because now, she was faster, quieter, and far more lethal.