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

by Cosway, L. H.

  I brush some hair away from her aged but still beautiful face and place a soft kiss to her cheek. That’s all the goodbyes I have time for because the others need me now. Cristescu has got Rita’s arms pinned behind her back as she struggles and kicks at him to let her go. She even tries to bite him.

  “You need to let go of me! You need to let me go!” she screams but the vampire isn’t budging an inch.

  Gabriel is holding a can of petrol nearby, waiting for Roman to gain the upper hand with Theodore. Unfortunately, it looks like our hero is failing in that department. Theodore is throwing bolts of magic at him, easily keeping him far enough away so that there’s no chance of him using the sword.

  Pulling my bow from off my back, I shoot an arrow at Theodore, clocking him right in the stomach. It doesn’t even make him bleed but simply pops right out and I get a blast of magic thrown my way in retaliation. Christ, it burns like acid seeping under my skin. The skin on my hand bubbles and spits and I swear profusely with the pain.

  Ira, who has shifted into his canine form, approaches Theodore from behind while his focus is on Roman, clamping his fangs down into Theodore’s shin. The sorcerer shows minimal signs of discomfort when he winces at the bite. A moment later he easily kicks Ira away and continues battling Roman.

  What a fuckup this is turning out to be.

  Theodore raises both his hands in front of him and purple light streams out, blasting Roman full tilt and knocking him entirely unconscious. Then he pulls a vial of blood from his pocket and pops open the cork. Bringing it to his mouth, he downs the entire thing in one go.

  Gross.

  He reaches up into the sky, his magic still streaming from his hands. A loud tearing sound erupts as a hole is torn in the clouds. A black, fiery rip is created and I swear I almost piss my pants when I see dark winged shapes hovering around the outskirts, waiting to come through.

  I’m willing to bet that was Rebecca’s blood he just drank, and this hole is a portal from hell. Only nobody’s going there, this time whatever’s over there is coming here.

  “Let. Me. Go!” Rita screeches and finally manages to free one of her hands from Cristescu’s hold. She smacks him hard in the face with magic and he reels back long enough for her to get away. I hadn’t noticed before but she’s actually got a sword strapped across her shoulders underneath a plain black backpack. She whips off the sword and goes charging to the other side of the stage.

  Roman has just now regained his consciousness and is advancing on Theodore, whose attention is on the ugly tear he created in the sky.

  “Come on, my pretties, don’t be shy. There is a whole world for you to feast on down here,” he sings to the creatures that I can almost feel pushing against the thin membrane between our dimension and theirs.

  I start to run, thinking I’ll stop Rita before she gets the chance to saw off Roman’s head. I’m not fast enough though, and she rushes easily out of my reach. The sorcerer is our final hope and now he might as well be done for. The little witch leaps up into the air, the sword held high above her head. I can hardly look as the blade comes within inches of Roman, but instead of swinging it his way, she changes directions and slices right through Theodore’s neck.

  Eh…what?

  She cuts his head clean off and for a second, or maybe even a minute, my brain is too discombobulated to figure out what just happened.

  Rita decapitated her own father.

  The second his head hits the stage floor the tear closes up and the creatures that had almost broken through completely disappear. White fluffy clouds fill the sky once more.

  We all stare at Rita, dumbfounded, as she lets her sword fall to the ground and then pulls off the backpack. She doesn’t look at a single one of us as she zips it open, takes out a can of petrol almost identical to the one Gabriel had brought, and begins dousing Theodore’s head and body.

  I hear the shake of a box of matches just before she whips one out, lights it up and flings it at her father’s corpse. It catches fire instantly and goes up in a mesmerising display of purple and black flames.

  Tegan

  Three hours earlier

  I blink my eyes, knowing I feel way too shitty to be dead – unless by some sick twist of fate I’ve ended up in hell. I peer around myself and discover that no, I’m not in hell. I’m still lying flat down in the mud, my neck sore and swollen from almost being choked to death.

  I can hear sobbing coming from nearby. Weakly pulling myself up to a sitting position I spot Rita a few feet away, her arms around her knees that she’s cradling to her chest. She’s quietly weeping, tears running down her face. The last thing I can remember is that same face looking at me with pure hatred. Now there’s nothing left but sadness.

  I shift my body a fraction and her eyes whip up to mine.

  “Not another move, Tegan.”

  “Rita…I…”

  “I said not another move.”

  “Okay, I won’t move.”

  She looks away from me then and wipes her eyes with the long sleeves of her dress. Both our clothes are completely destroyed with grass and dirt. I feel like I’ve simultaneously been punched in the throat and swallowed a bag of sand.

  “So, why didn’t you finish me off?” I ask in a sore, raspy voice.

  She doesn’t answer me for a very long time, then I all I get is, “I don’t know.”

  “You must know. What made you stop?”

  “I said I don’t fucking know. Now will you please just shut up?”

  I reach up and rub at my bruised neck, and that’s when I notice there’s something wrong with my hand. The index finger is hanging limply and I can’t seem to move it. My body must have gone into shock and blocked out the pain for a time, because now my entire hand is screaming in agony. I suck in a sharp, hissing breath and try to focus through the pain.

  “You broke my finger.”

  “You got lucky then.”

  “Rita, I know why you stopped. You stopped because you couldn’t bear to kill someone who’s your friend. No matter how much you try to convince yourself you’re evil, you know it’s not true. You know that Theodore is a madman, and I’m sorry to have to tell you this but despite the fact that he’s your biological parent, you’re nothing like him.”

  Talking seems to be distracting me from my effed up finger, so I keep going.

  “Even now when I look at you I see Noreen. I see her in your eyes and in your hair. I see her in your face. She will always be a part of you, a far bigger part because she’s the one who brought you into this world and she’s the one who raised you. Theodore is no better than a passing sperm donor and you know it.”

  I feel like I haven’t gotten through to her, and I don’t know what else to say. But then, Rita starts to speak. “If that’s true then how come every time I look in the mirror all I see is him? All I see is a lost cause.”

  “If you were a lost cause you would have killed me, but you didn’t. The good in you stopped it from happening.”

  “I can’t find the good.”

  I’m being brave when I get up on my hands and knees and crawl to her. She doesn’t tell me not to move. Instead she waits patiently for me to get to her.

  “I can help you find it,” I whisper, kneeling before her now. Her eyes lift to mine and there’s a trickle of hope within their watery, tear reddened depths.

  “Okay, then. Help me,” she says, her voice barely audible.

  “First you need to kill the darkness.”

  “How?”

  “By killing the person you think put it there. You have to kill Theodore.”

  Her eyes widen in disbelief. “I can’t do that. You don’t understand how powerful he is. I’ve spent time with him. The magic he possesses is unfathomable.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Everybody has a weak spot, and I think you just might be his. He’ll never expect you to be the one that kills him. You have the element of surprise on your side.”

  “Element of surprise, or not. I do
n’t know how to kill him, Tegan.”

  “Ah, but I do,” I say, pulling off my backpack and Ethan’s sword. “I have everything you need right here.”

  It takes only a minute or so to explain to her what I need her to do. We both rise to our feet and I take her into my arms, hugging her tight. This might be a tentative arrangement, but I think I may have actually won Rita back. Once we break the hug she disappears and I curse. Theodore must have shown her how to magically transport herself, while I’m left here in the middle of nowhere.

  Shoving my hand into my pocket, I retrieve my phone only to find the screen’s been cracked in several places from our earlier scuffle.

  Great.

  I stare out at the long stretch of empty field ahead of me and know I have a long walk back to Ethan’s. Fingers crossed I don’t pass out before I get there.

  Chapter Nineteen

  A New Day

  Finn

  It feels like there’s been silence for years as we all watch Rita do away with the remains of her sorcerer dad.

  The silence is broken, however, when Cristescu asks, “Is that my sword?”

  I can’t help but to burst out laughing. Then Gabriel and Alvie join in. Soon enough, we’re all cracking up, our relief at having escaped a full scale apocalypse by the skin of our teeth coming out in uncontrollable laughter.

  Once the flames die down and there’s nothing left of Theodore but a pile of ash, Rita looks to Cristescu and answers, “The sword probably is yours. Tegan gave it to me.”

  “Hold on a second, Tegan was in on this?” I question. That crafty little mare.

  She nods and sits down on the edge of the stage. “We fought. I was going to kill her but then I realised I couldn’t do it. That’s when we made a deal. She said she’d help find the old me, but first I had to kill Theodore because he was the one pulling me into the dark.”

  I walk over and sit down beside her, throwing my arm around her shoulders. She goes tense for a moment, but then relaxes into it. “I don’t think you need any help. I think the old you was there all along, you just didn’t know it.”

  Her nod is almost imperceptible. A minute or two later Alvie tentatively approaches us, sitting down on the other side of Rita.

  “Reet,” he chokes out and she turns her head to him.

  I’m not sure what she’s going to do, but then she pulls away from me and wraps her arms around Alvie’s small frame, squeezing him tight. They both start crying. The others join us to sit on the edge of the stage, a sea of bodies before us.

  “There are going to be many changes in this city,” says Cristescu, a solemn but determined sound to his voice.

  Nobody replies, but we all know it’s true.

  It’s certainly a strange feeling to look down on your city and see everyone lying prone on the ground, a charade of death. When we were kids, my little sister’s favourite fairy tale was sleeping beauty. Right now I’m looking at thousands of sleeping beauties, and I’m hoping that just like the princess, they’re all going to wake up soon.

  It’s a couple of minutes before sunrise. I’ve brought Allora with me up onto the roof of a department store on Campion Row so that we can watch and wait for everyone to come alive again.

  Apparently I’d been right about Emilia’s heart giving out because of the magic from Roman’s spell. Now that she’s dead her barrier around the city has also been lifted. Ira wore a strange expression when he heard what happened to her; it was more like sadness than the relief I’d expected. I guess that despite what she’d done to him, he started to feel sorry for the lonely old woman she’d become in the end.

  Tegan also seemed a little taken aback by the news. Her eyes grew watery and she left the room when we told her. I didn’t see her again for a couple of hours. Perhaps she was unconsciously holding onto the hope that Emilia would see the light and want to be a decent grandmother to her in the end.

  That’s not going to happen now.

  I look down at Roman as he walks through the bodies, a delicate silver light streaming out of his hand and touching off each person in turn. This is to ensure that they forget everything that’s happened in Tribane over the last few weeks. A year ago I never would have condoned the act of keeping people in the dark, but now I know there’s no other way. If they knew they’d all go crazy and start following some other cult leader in much the same way they’d started to follow Theodore.

  I wrap my arms around Allora’s soft, curvy waist and rest my chin on her shoulder. The dark starts to ebb away as the sun rises over the skyscrapers of the city. There’s a sweet, musical sound from Roman’s magic as the people start to wake up.

  Getting to their feet, they yawn, rub at their eyes, scratch their heads and completely ignore the bizarre fact that they’d all been asleep on pathways or in the middle of the road. As Allora’s eyes are scanning the people below she tenses in my arms.

  “Finn, I think I just spotted my parents. Come on, I have to go to them.”

  My heart stutters as she pulls away from me. “Wait, Goldy. They haven’t seen you in over two years. Perhaps this isn’t the right time.”

  “I’m not waiting,” she answers and then hurries to the stairway that leads back down onto the street. I follow her, trying to figure out why I’m feeling so dejected. Is it because deep down I feel like she won’t need me anymore once she gets her family back? Maybe.

  Out on the street I stay far behind as she races to her parents. Her mother is blonde just like her, but her father’s a tall, brown haired man. I stand back and watch her, my heart sinking further until I think it might just plunk down into my boots.

  Her mother begins to cry when she sees her and pulls her daughter into her arms. I look at her dad and see that there are tears in his eyes also; he puts his arms around his wife and daughter both. A bittersweet family reunion.

  Allora hasn’t once looked back to see if I’m still here. I turn around, thinking I’ll leave her with them. There’s no danger to her anymore now that Ridley is dead, and Theodore too. Just as I’m about to start walking away though, I hear her call my name.

  “Finn, come and meet my parents.”

  Taking in a deep breath, I turn back around. Perhaps she does need me after all.

  As it turns out, Allora’s parents had fled their home and were staying with friends. Because Roman wiped their memories, they don’t really know why they were staying with friends, but I’m guessing they got frightened when the vampire attacks started happening.

  Their names are Tom and Beena and I start to become uncomfortable at how profusely they thank me for keeping their daughter safe. Beena is full elf and Tom is human, creating a half elf in Allora. When we go back to their house and they see how trashed the place is, they assume it had been broken into and Tom starts making calls to their insurance company.

  Allora comes and sits down on my lap in the living room, while her mother tries to salvage what she can from the kitchen to make us all a cup of tea.

  “So, I guess this means I’m losing you,” I say in a low voice as I caress her thigh. I’ll never get tired of touching her.

  She startles when I say it and turns to look at me. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you’ve got your folks back. Ridley’s dead. You’re safe. You don’t need me anymore.”

  “Finn, I…”

  “It’s okay. I see how you look at them. You’ve missed them like crazy. I can understand that you’ll want to stay here. If I could have gotten my mother and sister back I’d want to spend every second I had with them, too.”

  “Finn, just stop. Yes, I’ll be living with my parents, but that doesn’t mean you’re losing me. God, I mean, after all we’ve been through, after all we’ve spoken about, how could you think that? I’ve seen our future and in that future we’re together.”

  I shrug and tighten my jaw. I’ve never been good with emotional crap.

  She pulls my face to hers so that her mouth is above my ear when she whispers, “I’ve fall
en in love with you. I want to be with you for the rest of my life, you silly man.”

  Something catches in my throat, causing me to swallow hard. “What?”

  “I said I love you,” she answers, eyes looking back and forth between mine with uncertainty as though waiting for something. Then, like a sledgehammer, it hits me.

  It takes a couple of seconds for me to find my voice. “Shit, isn’t it obvious that I love you, too? I can hardly keep my eyes off you when you walk into a room.”

  She giggles and rests her head in the crook of my neck. “Well, that wasn’t the most romantic way for you to declare your love for me, Finn, but at least you said it. I was beginning to think it was all one sided.”

  I cup the side of her face in my hand, pulling her mouth to mine and kissing her long and deep. A warm, foreign sensation spreads through my chest. I’ve been on my own for so long that I forgot how it felt to have someone. To belong to them unequivocally.

  We’re interrupted by the sound of her mother stepping into the room and clearing her throat. Beena’s eyes are dancing as she takes in the two of us together, and I’m relieved that she approves of my relationship with her daughter. Now I only have her father to contend with.

  Beena sets the cups and teapot down on the coffee table that managed to survive getting damaged when the house was thrashed. Tom returns, shoving his mobile phone into his pocket and rubbing at the stress lines on his forehead.

  “Well, that’s all taken care of. They’re sending someone out to inspect the damage tomorrow.”

  “That’s good, love,” says Beena pouring the tea.

  Tom’s eyes narrow when he notices Allora sitting on my lap. Embarrassed, she quickly scoots off and sits on the other side of the sofa. I want to smile, but I hold it in. We make polite chit chat for a couple of minutes, and then I almost spill tea everywhere when Beena lets out a loud gasp. Turning my head I find that Allora is having another vision, her body going into convulsions.

  I pull her into my arms and wait for the shakes to ride out.