Tegan's Power (The Ultimate Power Series #4) (2 page)

“Whatever you want, my
love, ask for it. I’m going to fuck you until you feel how much you mean to me,
until you understand the gift you have given me, you beautiful, fragile,
wonderful little thing,” he mumbles into my skin, his arm tightening around my
belly. I feel so small within his hold.

Sweat drips from him
and it smells incredible.

Silver clouds my
vision. All I can see is the core of him and I’m intrinsically drawn to it. I
never thought I would see the day when Ethan and I would make love so freely
under the light of the morning sun. It streams through the window and I reach
out, touching it like it’s a tangible thing.

Ethan grips my chin as
he continues to thrust in and out of me. “All the vampires in this city want me
to be their ruler,” he breathes, “but all I care about is being yours.”

The intensity of his
words causes me to move my eyes from his, because it’s too much to take.

“Don’t look away,” he
pleads. “I need to see your bottomless blue eyes as I fill you.”

Meeting his gaze once
more, I don’t look away.

Finn

Holy Mary mother of
Jesus
, she’s
really gone and done it now. I always thought Tegan had a reckless streak, but
that was putting it mildly. I don’t think there’s a single word in the English
language to describe this madness. Nobody with half a brain would consider it a
viable option to allow that bloodsucker to drink from her. And yet, there he
stands, unquestionably changed.

Is she even still
alive? Did he drink her dry, or take just enough in order to transform?

Now, I understand this
was a do or die situation. We’re outnumbered as fuck, for a start. But come on,
there’s no going back from this. We all stare up at Cristescu from below, the
entire vampire population of the city bowing down to him like he’s some sort of
effing high king of the damned.

Something inside of me
relaxes when I notice Tegan slumped weakly over the edge of the building,
staring at him too. Well, at least now I know she’s not dead.

He roars and every
fibre of me is repelled by the sound. I make eye contact with Gabriel first.
Like me, my friend knows exactly what has gone down on that roof. In private he
has often spoken to me of his fears about Tegan. He worried that one day some
power hungry vampire would get his hands on her blood and everything would change.
Well, now it’s happened. Only I don’t know if Tegan volunteered herself or if
he forced her.

The idea of him forcing
her makes me really fucking angry. The hurt I’d felt when she told me she’d
slept with him tries to rise to the surface, but I push it back down. She
picked him. There’s nothing I can do to make myself feel better other than try
to salvage what’s left of my wounded ego.

And, quite frankly,
fuck her. Yeah, I may act like everything’s all hunky dory on the outside, but
on the inside I’m allowed to be petty and jealous. She led me on. I’m not sure
if it was a conscious decision, but still, it hurts to be rejected. Now I’ve
learned my lesson not to let a pair of pretty blue eyes make a fool of me ever
again.

“We have to get out of
here,” says Gabriel with urgency, holding Alvie to him.

“I know, let’s make a
move while the vamps are distracted, eh?” I suggest, nodding to Delilah and
Ira, who’s standing by her side in his animal form. That Lucas prick is bowing
down just like the rest of the bloodsuckers.

Delilah looks shaken to
her core, her pale face staring up at her brother in stunned silence.

“Delilah,” I call for
her attention. “We have to go now.”

Ira whines and nips at
her hand. She finally pulls herself out of her shock and nods rapidly, holding
herself in her own arms. She tries to get Lucas’ attention, but there’s no
breaking him out of his trance. Finally, she gives up and follows us down the
ladder and back out onto the street.

Dead and unconscious
human bodies fill the pathways. The five of us walk close together, dodging the
bowing vamps. We speed up to a slow jog, needing to get as far away as possible
before Cristescu calls them to action. Delilah may be his sister, but he’s no
fan of the rest of us – me especially. Who knows what kind of plans he might be
concocting.

The city is a
wasteland. The only forms of life to be found are the dead (and yeah, I know
that’s technically incorrect since they’re dead, but whatever.) There are some
unconscious bodies, too. I can sense people hiding behind locked doors and
windows, too frightened to venture outside.

Once we’re clear of the
vamps I let out a long breath. We’re close to the more residential areas now,
which look completely untouched by the chaos. The quiet, peaceful streets feel
almost unreal after the craziness we’ve just been through.

Gabriel pulls Alvie
close to him, his arm tight around his narrow shoulders. Ira rubs his nose against
Delilah’s hip and she lets her hand drift through his thick fur. All of a
sudden, I feel decidedly alone. No partners to comfort me.

Oh well, fuck that
shit. I’ve been alone since my mother and sister died. Some things never
change. A brief image of Tegan in my arms flashes in my head, my hand down her
pants feeling her slickness, my tongue down her throat searching for her
tonsils. God, I’d been such a fool to think she actually wanted me. That she’d
actually choose me.

Okay, no more
self-pity, thank you very much, brain.

I’m tough. I’ve
survived a lot worse than a bit of female rejection in my time.

Once we reach the
outskirts of the city I decide to begin looking for some form of
transportation. Walking isn’t going to get us very far in the long run. A few
minutes later I spy an abandoned minivan by the side of the road, the doors
open, keys dangling from the ignition. Too good to be true, right? Wrong.

There are several dead
bodies littered on the ground outside of it. By the looks of it, they were
driven mad by the chaos and killed each other. I stand over a bloated middle
aged guy with shaggy red hair, his lifeless head hanging to one side. With the
toe of my boot I nudge his shirt collar down, checking his neck for fang marks.
None. My suspicions were right, these poor sods killed each other.

“Looks like we’ve found
a ride,” I tell Gabriel with a morbid grin.

He shakes his head,
unwraps Alvie from his hold and comes to help me shove the dead guy out of the
driver’s seat. His throat has been slit and there’s literally blood everywhere.
In my line of work, I’m used to it. Still, that doesn’t mean I’m looking
forward to sitting in the shit. His slack body drops down onto the hard ground
like a bag of wet sand and I find a coat in the back of the van to wipe away
most of the blood from the driver’s seat.

Checking the dash, I
see that the tank is three-quarters full. Handy. I slide in and turn the key in
the ignition, the engine roaring to life. Sticking my head out the window, I
call, “Hop in boys and girls, we’re off for a picnic.”

Delilah gives me an
irritable look. “You always have to be such a fucking piss taker,” she mutters,
slipping into one of the back seats with Ira.

“Yeah well, I’m not
gonna let your brother take the shine outta my sun.”

She huffs, narrows her
green eyes to slits and turns her head away, ignoring me.

“All aboard?” I shout
jovially, letting my arm hang out of the open window and banging hard against
the metal door. Nobody answers. I pull away from the side of the road.

We’re only driving for
about five minutes when all of a sudden, and I shit you not, a white stretch limousine
with tendrils of pearly, effervescent light shining from the windows like beams
of heavenly rays speeds out of nowhere and overtakes the minivan. With my driver’s
side window open, I hear a sharp female cry for help erupt from inside the limo.

What the fuck?

I increase my speed,
following it, when all of a sudden one of the doors flies open and a woman
dressed in a shimmery white evening gown jumps from the vehicle. She rolls
along the road, huddles in a crouch for a moment and then gets to her feet. She
begins running like her life depends on it.

She’s about to come
face to bumper with the minivan so I pull on the breaks and come to a
screeching halt seconds before I would have hit her.

“What’s going on?”
Gabriel asks urgently, squinting his eyes out the window at the dark road ahead.

Before I get the chance
to answer, I see a really tall guy emerge from the limo. He comes marching determinedly
after the woman. I look back to the woman who is now staring right into the
window of the minivan, shaking like a leaf. She’s got long, curly blonde hair
and crazy golden eyes.

I hop out of the
minivan and hurry to her.

“Are you okay?” I ask
her as her eyes flicker over me in an unfocused manner.

“Stay away,” she
croaks, holding out her shaking hand at the same time the guy from the limo
calls, “Touch her and die, Slayer.”

I look to the tall guy,
now recognising him as Michael Ridley, one of Theodore’s warlock arseholes.

The others have emerged
from the van, coming to stand beside me.

“Just try it, Warlock,”
I sneer back at him.

“Allora, come back here
now. You are being completely unreasonable.”

The woman, Allora,
flinches at the sound of Ridley’s voice and takes a step toward me.

“Please, don’t let him
take me. It hurts…he hurts me too much.”

At this statement my
protective instincts kick into high gear and I pull her to stand behind me.

“You hurt women, huh?”
I ask levelling my eyes on Ridley. “Why don’t you try hurting me instead, see
how well you fare?”

Ridley huffs out an
angry breath and raises his hand into the air, on the verge of casting a spell.
Thankfully, Ira leaps at him with a snarl and clamps his big teeth down on
Ridley’s hand before he gets the chance to finish. I wince when he doesn’t just
bite him, but jerks his head and tears the hand clean off.

Well, Ira does have
some, uh,
issues
with magic, so I can’t really blame him for his slight
overreaction.

An almighty wail erupts
from Ridley. He stares down at his now handless arm in horror as blood gushes
out. Ira allows the hand to fall to the ground with a wet thump and then walks
away with doggy style disinterest. Yep, I just said doggy style. It’s been way
too long since I last had a woman beneath me.

“I’m going to kill that
fucking dog,” Ridley screams.

“You’ll be killing no
one unless you get yourself to a hospital real soon, my friend,” I tell him,
wincing at the sight of his severed hand.

He swears profusely,
picks up his…hand, and then hurries back to his limo. The door slams shut and
the vehicle tears down the road. I turn to see Allora running away from us now,
in the opposite direction of the limo. Gabriel, Alvie and Delilah stare at her,
dumbfounded. Ira sits by the side of the van, licking the blood off his paws.

I decide it’s going to
have to be my job to go after her. I run down the road but she seems to hear me
coming because she quickens her pace. It must be awfully painful running in
those bare feet on the gravel. A second later I catch up to her, grabbing her
by the waist and pulling her to a stop. She wriggles in my hold, struggling to
break free.

“Let me go, please,”
comes her throaty cry. It sounds like she’s on the verge of tears. “I need to
get as far away from him as possible. I need to find my family.”

“Hush,” I whisper
soothingly. “You’re not going to get very far in your state. Let me help you.”

She goes still when I
speak and turns in my arms to look up at me. Her gold eyes continue to have
that unfocused way about them, and I suddenly come to the realisation that
she’s blind. I take the opportunity to study her more closely.

Her eyes are amazing.
I’ve never seen gold eyes on a human before, only on vampires. Her breasts are
at least double D’s, her lips are plump cushions, can’t see her arse or her
legs right now, her skin is lightly tanned and smooth, and her hair is a mass
of silky curls. In other words, she’s beautiful – and still trembling in my
arms.

“I know your voice,”
she whispers then, her forehead crinkling in thought.

“I don’t think so,
baby. We’ve never met before. I would definitely remember meeting you.”

She shakes her head.
“No, you don’t understand…”

“Are you hurt?” I ask
cutting her off. “What were you doing with that son of a bitch Ridley anyway?”

Her soft breath hits the
base of my throat as she breathes frantically. “He kidnapped me when I was on
my way home from class two years ago. I haven’t seen the outside of his house
until tonight.”

“He kidnapped you?” I
ask in disbelief. “Why? Is he some kind of sicko?”

“Not in the way you’re
thinking. He called you a slayer, does that mean you know about supernaturals?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”