Tegan's Power (The Ultimate Power Series #4) (3 page)

She exhales in some
kind of relief and then her small hands are cupping my face, moving over my
features in concentration. “Can I trust you?” she asks as she tries to see me
through touch. I stand stock still, utterly entranced.

“Of course you can. I’m
one of the good guys, Goldy.”

She seems to blush at
my words, but continues moving her hands over my face. Next they slide down my
neck before resting on my shoulders. I swallow hard.

“I’m half-elf,” she
says, presumably coming to the conclusion that she can trust me. “I have the
talent of seeing into the future. At first Ridley tried to drain my power to
use it for himself, but he didn’t succeed. The spell went wrong and ended up
blinding me. I only have about twenty percent vision now. He decided to keep me
prisoner so that whenever he needed a prediction he could use me.”

“Jesus Christ,” I
mutter, staring at her with wide eyes. “I bet you’re glad my friend Ira bit off
his hand, eh?”

“Hearing his pain was a
small revenge,” she says, nodding. “Where are we? Can you bring me back to the
city? My parents live there.”

“Uh, the city’s a no-go
area at the moment. You probably don’t know this, but there was a reason why
Ridley was leaving. The vampires have taken over. They’ve been slaughtering
humans and there’s also been some magical business making the humans go crazy
and kill each other. You don’t want to go there for a while.”

Suddenly, tears spring
to her eyes. “Are all of the humans dead? My parents…”

“No, no, they’re not
all dead, but it’s still not safe to go there yet. Not with the vampires all
blood-lusty. Oh, and there’s a mad sorcerer on the loose.”

She slumps in my arms,
her small frame resting against me.

“Come on, stay with me
for a little while and then we’ll figure out how to return you to your family.”

She nods, wiping at her
eyes. “Yes, thank you.”

Slipping my arm under
her legs, I scoop her up and carry her back to the minivan.

Happiness
is Just a Cut Away

Tegan

“Let’s go outside,” I say, my naked body
on top of Ethan’s, our limbs intertwined in rest.

We spent half the
morning having sex, but I don’t feel tired. No, I feel
wired.
His blood
is better than shooting heroin…not that I know what shooting heroin feels like,
but this has got to be better. I could run a marathon right now.

Ethan chuckles deeply.
“Okay. Where would you like to go?”

“I don’t care.
Anywhere. I just want to see you out in the sun.”

I hop from the bed and
begin jumping up and down, hyper as you please. It’s like I have all this
energy inside of me that I need to burn off. I only get self-conscious when I
remember that I’m naked and Ethan is watching my breasts as they shake.

A hot, affectionate expression
crosses his features and I get a little jolt of panic at the love in his eyes.
I’ve never considered myself a commitment-phobe, but committing to the most
powerful vampire in the city would give even the most relationship needy person
anxiety. What makes me even more anxious is the love that I feel in return.
It’s almost the same as how I felt for Matthew. Just more – so much more.

Bringing my hands up to
my eyes, I can see every tiny line on my skin, every pore. It’s like I have super-duper
detailed vision now. Not only do I want to see Ethan in the sun, I also want to
see other things with this new sight before it runs out.

No high lasts forever.

Ethan pounces on me, scoops
me up into his arms and carries me to his bathroom where he turns on the shower.
He settles me under the hot spray and begins lathering both of our bodies with
soap and shampoo. His hands roam my skin, exploring every inch, before he turns
off the water and wraps me in a towel.

I don’t have any
clothes here, but I find that he’s laundered the ones I had been wearing. They
sit neatly folded on the arm of a chair and I have a strange vision in my head
of Ethan doing laundry. So out of place.

I slip on my jeans and
T-shirt and lace up my boots. Once dressed I find Ethan standing in his front
garden, his face held up to the sun. He’d been doing the exact same thing when
he was sitting in his chair this morning. Something in my heart flutters at the
knowledge that I gave this to him. I’ve given him my blood but he hasn’t turned
into a monster. He’s just been made better. He is no longer imprisoned to live
only in the dark.

I step up beside him
and lace my fingers through his. His eyes turn down to meet mine and he grins.

“What’s been going on
in the city while I was sleeping?” I ask warily as we walk away from his house
and down the quiet street. I don’t really want to ruin my good mood with
reality, but I’m worried about Finn and the others. In fact, I’m antsy as hell
to know where they are.

“My people cleared away
the dead as I instructed them to. Much of the human population tried to flee,
but they couldn’t.”

I arch a brow at him.
“What do you mean they couldn’t?”

Ethan sighs as though
he was hoping we could avoid the heavy subjects for a little while longer. “There
is some sort of magical force field around the city. Nobody can get out. There
is also a block on all forms of electronic communication. No calls, emails,
messages of any sort can get to the outside world.”

I gasp, my heartbeat
speeding up. “What?! Did Theodore do this?”

My skin crawls with
claustrophobia. We’re all stuck in Tribane. Indefinitely.

Ethan shrugs, and I
find the gesture far too nonchalant for the topic we’re discussing. “He’s the
most likely candidate.”

“We have to find him,
Ethan. I can’t abandon Rita, and if you leave Theodore to his own devices for too
long he’ll come up with something…I don’t know, something bad. The fact he can
imprison us all inside the city is scary enough. Aren’t you scared?”

“I wonder if I could
kill him,” Ethan ponders, ignoring my question. “Well, I’d have to find him
first.” He shakes his head. “Normally though, the only person who can kill a
sorcerer is another sorcerer. A pity I don’t have any of those in my address
book,” he jokes and squeezes my hand, placing a kiss to my temple.

I narrow my eyes at his
louche attitude. Then my thoughts race at his statement. I may not have any
sorcerers in my address book, but I do know of one out there. I glance up at
Ethan. “Um, there’s something I need to tell you.”

His silver and blue
eyes flicker with interest. “Yes?”

“You remember Emilia?
My grandmother? The one who took Pamphrock’s daughter?”

“I do.”

“Well, before she went
all
Hand that Rocks the Cradle
on us, she told me that my mother was the
result of an affair she had with a sorcerer called Roman. My grandfather is a
sorcerer! There must be some way that I can get in contact with him. I mean,
maybe he won’t want to kill Theodore but he could be able to offer us advice.”

“So that is why you
have so much magic,” Ethan breathes, stopping to stand in front of me. He runs
his hands from the ends of my short hair down to rest on my shoulders.

“Yeah.”

His eyes get big and
round as he stares at me, then a second later he begins walking again. I
follow. “We would never find this Roman,” he says, dismissing the idea.

“I could ask Emilia.
That bitch owes me after all the trouble she caused, pretending I could trust her
and then running off with Rebecca.”

“Aha,” says Ethan,
flashing me a hint of fang. “Shall we pay her a visit?”

I sigh. “Not today.” Lowering
my voice shyly, I continue, “I want just one day with you. One day that’s
just…us.”

He squeezes my hand and
bends down to suck my earlobe into his mouth. “I like that idea.”

We continue our walk.
The city seems different. It has an air about it kind of like a housewife
living in quiet desperation. Nobody understands what’s happening but they’re
too afraid to kick up a fuss in case the vampires decide to go all killer on
them again. There are people on the streets, but not the crowds there used to
be. Lots of shop windows have been boarded up and others are simply locked
tight, not open for business like they would normally be in the middle of the
day.

I try to ignore the
fact that we’re all prisoners. As I said to Ethan, I need a day that’s free of
worry. A day where I can just be a girl in love with a madly handsome man.

I let go of Ethan’s
hand and break into a run. His laugh drifts behind me as he watches me take
off. I’ve never ran this fast before in my life. I chuckle to myself as I get
these grandiose ideas of entering the Olympics. Ethan could just give me some
blood before every race. To think that such a feeling can be gotten from a
little gash across his skin, from me putting my lips to it and sucking.

I hop up onto a ladder
affixed along the side of a three story building and climb it effortlessly. I
can tell Ethan’s somewhere behind me even though I can’t hear a single rustle
of movement. I race over the rooftop and go flying into the air, sailing
through the narrow four foot distance between this building and the next one. I
feel like a little wingless bird. My heart beats wildly and I grin like a crazy
person as my feet crash down onto the hard surface.

Not a single stitch.

This is amazing.

I stand and get ready
to continue my roof jumping antics when suddenly Ethan grabs me and flips me
over his shoulder. I wiggle in his grip but obviously it’s a useless effort.

“What’s gotten into
you?” he growls before setting me down on the ground. We’re already off the
roof and back on the street. Yeah, he moves that fast now.

“Having fun, you should
try it sometime,” I answer with a cheeky sideways smile.

“You could have
severely injured yourself. What you’re feeling isn’t real, Tegan. It’s a
chemical high. You can’t actually fly, you know.”

“That’s not what I
thought,” I say, pouting, because that’s
exactly
what I thought.

He pulls me to him,
wrapping his arms around my waist. “It’s just the blood,” he whispers. “Your
little human bones can still break if you fall.”

“I know that,” I
answer, feeling embarrassed now.

All of a sudden, the
sun is too bright. It dizzies me. I stare into the window of a women’s boutique
across the road where there are all sorts of glittery dresses on display.
Despite the distance, I can see the stitch in every sequin; I can see every
thread weaved throughout the fabric. Jesus, the details are hurting my brain.

Somewhere close by, a
seagull lets out a loud caw and I hear too many notes in the one sound, too
many levels of noise. I clamp my hands over my ears to block it out.

“Tegan, are you
alright?” Ethan asks with concern just before I pass out.

When I wake up I’m
lying on the couch in his living room and he’s holding a cool wet face cloth to
my forehead. It feels soothing.

“I think you might have
drank too much from me,” he says when he sees my eyes flicker open.

“Yeah. God, is that
what it feels like to be you? I felt as though I was going to go crazy from
sensory overload.”

A small smile curves
his lips. “I have the natural ability to turn it on and off at will. Since you
are human, you don’t have that. I think my blood had fully hit your system when
we were out on the street and that’s why you fainted.”

“I feel better now. The
high is wearing off.”

I reach down and rub my
shin where it aches, most likely from the jump I took across the roof. The
blood didn’t protect me from being hurt, it just protected me from feeling pain
in the moment. Huh. Not as fantastic as I originally imagined then. And now
that the high is dwindling I can feel a sharpness in my veins crying out for
more blood. So this is what it feels like to be addicted.

I lick my lips as my
eyes zone in on Ethan’s smooth neck. There isn’t a single hint of evidence of
the cut he gave himself this morning. Without realising it, I’m sitting up and
leaning closer to him, my breathing erratic.

He puts both his hands
on my shoulders and pushes me back down onto the couch.

“I figured this might
happen,” he says sadly.

“What? What would
happen?” I ask but I’m not really listening. I’m only imagining all of the
sweet blood rushing through his veins, singing for me to drink it.

“That you would want
more. I didn’t think it would happen so quickly though.”

His words break me out
of my trance. “Oh.”

A silence elapses.

“Well, we just won’t do
it again,” I say, pulling farther back and folding my arms across my chest with
great effort.

Ethan winces at how I
distance myself from him.

“Fuck. But I really
like it when you drink from me, Tegan.”