Tegan's Power (The Ultimate Power Series #4) (36 page)

My eyes fall shut and
blackness takes over.

I’m Waking Up

Tegan

Birdsong twitters in my ears and the
scent of flowers and freshly cut grass fills my nose; it would be pleasant if
it weren’t for the lingering scent of anti-septic. It’s hard to open my eyes,
but when I finally manage to pry my lids apart I find myself in a clean,
sparsely furnished space, sort of like a hospital room.

I’m hooked up to an IV
machine and I wince to see the tubes stuck into my arms. I try to sit up but a
heady sense of weakness overcomes me and I have to lie back down again for a
minute. The events that happened before I passed out rush through my head. How
long have I been sleeping for?

And oh, God.

What happened to my
baby?

I run my hand down my
abdomen but only find a horrifically flat surface where once there was a
bulging round baby bump. Pulling the pale white sheets off my body, I look down
at the loose nightdress I’ve been put in. I lift it up to reveal my stomach and
there are no signs of stretch marks, no signs of a pregnancy at all. A terrible
swell of loss makes my throat clog with tears.

Where is Ethan?

The pain I felt at the
party is gone completely. I manage to summon up enough strength to pull the IV
from my arms, climb out of bed and walk to the open window. There are pretty
lawns outside with a few people sitting on benches or walking the grounds.
Farther away I spot an entrance gate, over which hangs a big white sign
proclaiming the name of wherever the hell it is I am, but I’m too far away to
make out what it says.

I startle when a knock
sounds twice at the door and a middle aged woman dressed in an orderly’s
uniform steps inside.

“Ah, you’re awake,” she
says and then frowns when she sees the tears running down my face.

“Where is Ethan? Who
brought me here?” I ask frantically, my heart racing.

“Please, calm down,”
says the woman. “You don’t want to go upsetting yourself.”

“Where is Ethan?” I
repeat.

“I have no idea who
you’re talking about, Miss, but if you would just get back into bed…”

“I’m not getting back
into bed until somebody explains where I am!” I shout.

“You’re in St. Frances’
Psychiatric Hospital,” she answers. “Now please, at least sit. You shouldn’t
have removed the IV. Just look at the mess you’ve made.”

I narrow my eyes at her.
“Psychiatric hospital?”

“That’s right. You’ve
been here for quite a while,” she says as though I’m stupid not to already know
this.

Suddenly, my head
starts to hurt, a terrible ache pulsing at my skull. I put my hands to my
temples and sit down on the threadbare armchair by the window. What the hell is
going on? Why am I in a freaking loony bin? And where the hell is everyone? I
want to ask the orderly more questions, but the pain in my head is too much.

Everything starts to
feel strange and weird ideas take shape in my mind. Like, is this reality and
whatever I thought my life had been up until now just a dream? Grief swells in
my chest and I start to cry again. The orderly looks at me uncomfortably, says
she’s going to get some cleaning supplies and leaves the room.

This can’t be real.

I can’t have lost
everything. Or did I even have it to begin with? Were all of the vampires,
witches and warlocks just a figment of my imagination? Did I really go mad with
grief after Matthew died and get admitted to this place?

No. Everyone was too
vivid for me to have made them all up. I can see their faces, remember the way
they smelled, the little nuances they each possessed. My brain might be a
colourful place, but it’s not
that
colourful. But then I start to think
about how much Rita resembled my bitchy side and how Finn and I had almost the
exact same sense of humour, the way Gabriel reminded me of how sometimes I can
be terribly shy, and I wonder in horror, did I make them up?

The idea that it could
be true, that I am just some madwoman in a mental hospital makes me feel like
the walls are closing in on me and I have to get out. My heart hurts. Still in
the thin nightdress, I stand on wobbly legs and leave the room. Walking through
the long halls, a few other patients watch me go by, but they don’t stop me.
Nobody stops me.

When I get to a side
exit I push open the door and allow the fresh air to wash over my face, the
sunlight to caress my skin. I step out onto the grass and feel like I can
breathe again, the cool blades tickling the soles of my feet. The grounds of
the hospital are vast and I keep walking, feeling like if I walk far enough I
will be able to escape my brain and the awful truths it’s trying to make me
believe.

Two older men are
sitting on either side of a wooden picnic table playing chess. I stand still for
a long time, just watching them make their moves and chat about nothing
important. Then my gaze is drawn farther afield, to a bench in the distance
where a man sits alone. His hair is blonde and the sun glints off it, making it
seem as though it’s sparkling.

Hope catches in my
lungs.

My feet are moving of
their own accord now, and the tears from before start up again, but for a whole
new reason this time. I stop several feet away as the man lifts his arms up,
and in his hands is a baby girl with blonde hair an even lighter shade than
his. She can’t be any more than a couple of weeks old.

She lets out a little
gurgling sound when he lifts her and he laughs as he lowers her back down onto
his lap. He cradles her in his arms, rocking her back and forth and I stand
there transfixed, unable to move. I take a step and he freezes, his head
turning slightly to the side.

His voice is full of
affection when he calls, “I was wondering when you were going to wake up.”

My legs won’t hold me
up anymore and I fall to my knees. I was wrong. It wasn’t all a dream, it was
real. There was once a time when I would have wished for vampires and magic to
be a dream, but not now. Now my heart belongs to the world I discovered and I
wouldn’t survive if it was taken away from me. More importantly, my heart
belongs to the man sitting on the bench four feet away and the baby he’s
holding in his arms.

Ethan stands and walks
to me, bending down on one knee. I’m staring at my hands, unable to look at him.
He tips my chin up so that my teary eyes meet his.

“I believe you two have
yet to meet,” he says, holding the baby girl out to me.

From the very moment I
laid eyes on her I knew she was mine. I felt it like butterflies under my skin.
When I bring myself to look at her I’m met with big, bottomless blue eyes and I
don’t know why but I laugh and cry at the same time.

“She’s so beautiful,” I
whisper, afraid to touch her in case she breaks.

“Just like her mother,”
says Ethan, shifting her into one arm so that he can help me off the ground and
lead me over to sit on the bench. He places her in my arms and a wave of
emotion washes over me. She feels so small and delicate.

How can someone so
breakable be destined to become a ruler?

“She doesn’t have my
blood,” I realise suddenly. I don’t get the same feeling from her as I get from
Rebecca.

“No,” says Ethan. “I
suppose we can count ourselves lucky that she doesn’t.”

Cool relief washes over
me.

A long time passes as
we sit in silence; I’m fascinated by her little hands and her tiny feet, by the
ridiculously golden eyelashes and the porcelain shade of her skin. You can
certainly tell she’s a dhamphir, because no human baby ever had such vibrant,
perfect features.

“I don’t understand why
we’re here,” I say, at long last breaking my reverie.

Ethan leans forward and
runs a finger down our baby’s cheek, his arm tight around my shoulders. I don’t
ever want to leave this moment.

“The doctor I had you
seeing,” he starts to explain in a gentle voice, “he does a lot of work for
supernaturals, but in order to go unnoticed by the human population he uses
this hospital as a front. Half of the building is a normal, functioning
psychiatric hospital and the other half is a supernatural hospital. I had you
kept in the human half to keep the vampires from smelling your blood. You had a
C-section and I fed my blood to you intravenously to help you heal.”

“Ah, so that’s why I
don’t have any scars. You know, I thought I’d had a mental break when I woke up
here. How long have I been out for?”

“A month. The longest
month of my life. For a while we didn’t know if you would make it,” he answers
and there’s a vulnerability in his voice when he tells me this.

I turn my head so that
I can kiss his cheek. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”

He pulls me tighter
into his side. “Don’t be sorry, I’d go through it a thousand times more if it
meant I could have the both of you.” He pauses. “So, what do you think we
should call her?”

I give him a surprised
look. “She’s been alive a whole month and you haven’t even given her a name!”

“I wanted to wait for
you. I thought you’d like to choose.”

I stare at her and
wrack my brain for names, then give her a little kiss on the top of the head
when I come to a decision. “I think we should call her Darya, after Mum.”

“I like that choice,”
says Ethan. “Darya Cristescu.”

“Darya
Cristescu-Stolle,” I amend.

He laughs and nuzzles
my cheek. I lean my head back on his shoulder and when I look at Darya again I
find she’s fallen asleep. I breathe in deep and close my eyes, letting the
feeling of wholeness wash over me. For so long I felt alone in the world, but
now I have a family. It might have been a difficult road to get here, but like
Ethan said, I would go through it all a thousand times more just to have this
one moment…right now.

END.

Read
on for an excerpt from Darya’s story…

17
years later

Darya Cristescu-Stolle always hated to
see injustice.

Even before she knew the meaning of the
word, she knew she didn’t like it. There was a boy called Arthur in her playschool
who would take all the best toys so that only he and his friends could play
with them. To remedy the situation, Darya asked her aunt Rita to make an
itching potion that she could use against the bully. With a mischievous gleam
in her eyes, Aunt Rita agreed and a day later presented Darya with a small tub
of white powder. Arriving early at school, Darya scattered the powder over the
coveted toys and as soon as Arthur and his friends began to play with them they
broke out in a horrible rash.

That day Darya felt as though justice
had been served.

It’s unfortunate that every day can’t be
like that one. Now she is seventeen years old, attending a boarding school
where she is far from the most popular biscuit in the biscuit tin. If everyone
likes the chocolate ones, then Darya is the one with no chocolate at all. She
is the plain digestive, the custard cream at a stretch.

If they knew the truth she would be more
popular than all of them put together, but nobody knows the truth. She comes
from a world where she might as well be royalty, but she can’t tell anyone
about that world. At thirteen years old, at her father’s insistence and for her
own safety, she was shipped off to a human boarding school where she could hide
in plain sight. Peace in Tribane city came at a price, and that price was
Darya’s freedom.

Ever since she could remember she heard
murmurings about her future, a future where it was predicted she would become a
great and powerful ruler. But in order for that future to come to pass she
would have to spend her teenage years disguised as a human.

And the simple fact of the matter was,
she didn’t even really like the idea of being a ruler anyway.

Walking into her Geography class she
immediately spotted Harry Feeny and his pals standing around her best friend
Georgia’s desk. Georgia was the shyest girl you could ever meet; it was one of
the things Darya loved about her. She envied how she always managed to keep
quiet and follow the rules. No matter how much she wanted to, there was
something inside of Darya that never allowed her to live such a quiet life. If
she saw injustice being done then she had to act against it – one of the main
reasons why she was such an unpopular biscuit.

An injustice was being done right there
and then to her poor friend. Harry picked up Georgia’s art folder, opened it
and allowed all of her wonderful drawings to fall out onto the floor. Darya
could see the tears filling Georgia’s eyes as she marched towards Harry and
gave him an almighty slap across the head.

“Pick up every scrap of paper right
now,” she instructed him as his enraged eyes turned to her.

He gritted his teeth as he responded,
“Make me, you little bitch.”

His friends laughed and Darya glared at
them. Being a dhamphir, she knew she was far stronger than any of these human
boys, yet she could never show them her real strength because then her cover
would be blown. She clenched her fists, just itching to teach this boy a lesson
he would never forget, when their teacher walked into the classroom. The
chatter of the students died down as the foreboding presence of their Geography
teacher, Mr Wolf, filled the space.