Part 6
Tania remained standing where she was, letting Parker get closer. A cold wind blew, chilling her. She didn't shiver. Parker, of course, had no idea about her hobby of killing vampire scum like him. Her hand slipped inside her purse, around her stake, and she continued to wait, watching him grinning an animal grin, his eyes shining in the dim light.
"Not going to run? Or scream?"
She laughed harshly. "It takes a lot to scare me, and you don't. Frankly, you're irritating me."
Insulting vampire ego was not a smart thing, one she had learnt from many hard lessons, but still, it was a compulsion she just couldn't help.
What she didn't like was the weird crackly tension in the air as he came ever closer. There was something hovering around the two of them, almost like a silver curtain. She wondered vaguely if he could see it.
He reached out to grab her arms, and she yanked her stake out, ready to strike it home. As he leaned to grab her bare skin, the same thing happened that did the other night.
Sparks seemed to shoot, like being electrified, and her vision was going strangely pink. Parker glared at her in helpless fury.
"What the hell are you *doing?*" he demanded.
"I'm not doing it!" she shouted back, moving away from him, holding the stake in front of her, more to protect her from the strange connection rather than him.
And then everything got even stranger. As she moved backwards, Parker suddenly sprang forward, knocking her down. A fast blur of something brown appeared, knocking Parker off her.
Tania's head hit the concrete and she blinked as lights began to swirl around and her vision began to waver. There was a *wolf* attacking Parker. Was she seeing things right? Where the hell did that come from?
She sat up, and for a moment, wondered if she was going to be sick, she took several deep breaths, managing not to be. The wolf howled then, and she smiled a little, watching Parker glance at her, the wolf, and suddenly turn and run.
"Tania?"
Tania blinked again as she focused on her friends, running down the road. Shelia and Talasai helped her up. Tania glanced over at the wolf, who wasn't a wolf anymore, but a girl about their age. Her hair was a mop of dark brown curls, her eyes glowing silver. She looked somewhat familiar.
"Tania what happened?" Neona asked.
Tania frowned. "That's what I'd like to know." She looked over at the werewolf.
Much to her already growing surprise, the werewolf girl looked a little hurt. "You don't remember me?" she asked Tania.
Tania's frowned deepened, as she tried to place where she'd seen the girl from before. Memories were starting to rise in her mind, of laughing and giggling when cartoons were fun, and new toys were exciting, sad times when she'd been alone, and a little girl had asked her to come and play...
"My God," she said. "Fallon?"
Fallon smiled a little. "You do remember."
"Yeah. You're a werewolf?"
Fallon nodded. "Hmm. I couldn't tell you because there were rules about it, and that bitch of a sister of yours would go blabbing if I told. But you..."
"Yeah, I know," Tania said. "The Night World, everything. We're Daybreakers."
"What's going on?" Neona asked.
Talasai frowned. "Maybe we should find somewhere a little more private where you two can explain what's going on cause the rest of us don't have a clue."
Tania nodded. "Fine. But I don't have any more ideas than you do."
* * *
Part 7
Phoenix paced up and down, waiting for Cort and Stacia to come back with their report. Somehow, she knew Parker couldn't be trusted anymore, so she'd sent them to spy on him, and if he didn't do what she'd told him, they'd tell.
The door to the study opened and she looked up as they came in. Cort was shaking his head in disgust. "Parker really is an idiot," he snorted.
Phoenix frowned. "Why?"
Stacia sat down in the large office chair behind the desk, crossing her elegant long legs. "Because Parker told Tania he was in love with her."
Phoenix stopped dead. "What?"
"He followed her home, she caught him, asked why he was following her and the stupid asshole said he was in love with her. Then he seemed to get hold of himself and went to kill her, and there was something weird in their air that was a lot like a soulmate connection," Stacia said.
Phoenix shook her flame-coloured head, not wanting to believe what they were telling her. How could they do this to her? She had trusted Parker, God, even loved him. And he had bitterly betrayed her.
Anger seethed inside her, boiling, making her fists clench in rage. Cort seemed amused.
"What's so Goddamn funny?" she snapped.
"It's kind of ironic really, isn't it?" he said. "You don't expect your boyfriend to be your baby sister's soulmate."
"Adopted sister," Phoenix snapped.
"That's the thing I don't get," Stacia said. "Your family are Redferns. Redferns are vampires. They despise humans, they're the ones who want to destroy the world when the millennium comes. So why the hell would your parents adopt a little human?"
"Maybe Tania *isn't* human," Cort suggested. Phoenix and Stacia stared at him. He stared back. "Oh come on, you can't say you haven't noticed how much the girl looks like a Harman. She has the eyes and the hair and everything. Hell, even a necklace with a fucking dahlia on it."
Phoenix frowned. Maybe he was right. She turned to her dad's file cabinet and began searching through it until she found Tania's adoption file.
She yanked out Tania's birth certificate. Cort and Stacia looked out.
"Well, what'd ya know?" Cort said, seeming rather smug.
Phoenix ignored him. Everyone got to be right at least once in their life. "She was christened Tatania Harman-Redfern."
"So she's half witch, half vamp," Stacia said.
Cort frowned. "What happened to her parents."
Phoenix frowned. "They were killed by vampire hunters. Tania once told me her mom said she was going to do something special and help save a lot of people."
"Maybe we find Tania and get her to tell us what the hell's going on," Cort suggested.
Right twice in one night. He was on a roll.
* * *
Part 8
Tania and her friends sat around a table in a local Night World coffee house, The Full Moon. Due to the large number of Night People on the small island, there was booming business for cafes like this and clubs like the Black Iris chain. Tania finished the story about what happened with Parker. Both times when she'd been confronted in a fight with him, this weird electric sparky thing had had been hanging around them, as if it wanted to electrocute them.
"It sounds like a soulmate connection," Neona said insistently.
Tania glared at her. "Will you stop that? It's not soulmates!" she snapped. "Maybe he's in love with me, but that doesn't change anything. I hate him!"
Shelia's lips curved into a smile. "Are you sure?"
Tania ignored this, and turned her attention to Fallon, who had sat there silently. "Why were you suddenly there?"
Fallon frowned. "I was hunting in the woods, on my way home and I saw him. He was going to hurt you."
"I could have taken him," Tania said, annoyed. "I'm a vampire hunter."
"And you live with a family of vampires?" Shelia asked.
"That always surprised me," Tania admitted. "Why would a bunch of vampires - Redferns, nonetheless, adopt a human."
"Because you're *not* human," Fallon said. "You're the Fourth Wild Power."
Tania blinked. "What?" She realised all her friends were looking at her, looks of surprise and disbelief on their faces.
"Oh God, how could we have missed it?" Neona said. "I should have seen it."
"Seen what?" Tania asked, feeling her annoyance rise.
"You have Harman traits - the pale gold hair, the violet eyes," Talasai pointed out. "One of your birth parents must have been a witch."
Tania didn't know what to believe. She sat there in silence, not really listening. A witch?
"Remember that necklace your mom gave you?" Fallon asked.
Tania blinked. She reached under the collar of her sweater and pulled the chain out. The black flowers glittered in the light of the candle on the table. "Yeah."
"Then you know what species the two flowers stand for," Fallon said.
Tania frowned. "Black iris is for lamia, black dahlia is for witches."
"So you're half and half?" Neona asked.
"No," Tania said instantly. "I am *not* a vampire. Vampires are scum."
"Thank you," Talasai said dryly.
Tania flushed. "Well, most vampires. Besides," she added, "if I'm a vampire, how come I've never needed to feed?"
Fallon shrugged. "Half breeds don't need to use their vamp powers. You don't need to feed the vampire part if you don't want to use your vampire powers."
"Your adopted parents might have known this," Neona suggested.
"How come no one told me?" Tania asked.
"Maybe because the Redferns are the bad guys," Fallon suggested. "They want all the Wild Powers dead. If Daybreak have less than one Wild Power then the darkness will win, it's inevitable." She quoted, "Four to stand between the light and power/Four of the blue fire, power in the blood/Born in the year of the Blind Maiden's vision/Four less one and the darkness triumphs./"
Tania didn't say anything. Her? The Wild Power? There were other half breeds out there, there had to be? She remembered her mother again, telling her one day she would do something that would help a lot of people. Did her mother mean she would help the other Wild Powers save the world?
"I don't know how to use any witch powers, or vampire powers," she said finally.
"That doesn't matter," Fallon said, sounding eager. "Daybreak will train you, along with the other powers. The third Power we found, Iliana, she's like you, she's a lost witch who's learning to use her powers. They're training all the others too."
"If you're the Wild Power then you've got to hide," Talasai said with a frown. "Phoenix hates you enough as it is. Imagine what she'd do if she knew you were the Wild Power."
Tania frowned. She was right. Did Phoenix already know? She'd sent Parker to try and kill her once. It wasn't likely she would stop at that. She did not want to be confronted with Parker again. The same thing had happened twice when she'd been fighting with him. She didn't like the thoughts that were starting to form in her mind. A sinking feeling that was telling her that maybe Neona was right. She remembered talking to her Daybreak friend Mary-Lynnette Carter who had talked about discovering her own soulmate, about how at first she had hated him, and how the connection was not pleasant in the least. But then...he changed, and the soulmate connection became more pleasant.
Tania shook her head abruptly. Just because the same thing had happened to Mary-Lynnette and Ash didn't mean that it was going to end up like that with her and Parker.
"Okay," she said finally. "Let's go."
They paid their bill, and left the café to find themselves confronted with Phoenix and a group of Night People waiting for them.
"Go!" Phoenix ordered.
And a fight broke out. Tania found that the Night People under Phoenix's orders somehow seemed to be coming at her more than the others. Phoenix herself wasn't taking part in the fight, she stood back, directing everyone else around.
Tania plunged her stake into the heart of one of the vampires, jumping back at it reached out, clawing at her, it's knife slicing into her cheek. Pain struck, sharp and stinging.
A scream sounded, and she glanced over to see Neona and Sheila backed into a corner, with nowhere to run, their witch fire was glowing, but it didn't seem to be having much effect.
And Tania got mad. That wasn't right. It wasn't fair. As she felt her anger well inside her, something else seemed to be blooming too. Something from deep inside her, a part that had been hidden and was now waking.
And the blue fire erupted from her in a blast of heat, hurtling towards the Night People attacking her friends. The blast flared to an unbelievable brightness. When it cleared, the figures in black were gone. Phoenix was still there, along with Stacia and Cort. They were surrounded by a sort of red-gold glow. They were all staring in disbelief.
"One of them's the Wild Power," Stacia said, amazement clear in her voice.
"Who?" Phoenix asked.
Tania didn't know what to think. They didn't realise it was her. On one point, a plus for her. But...would it be a downside for everyone else?
With a moment faster than the eye could see Phoenix suddenly sprang forward, grabbing Fallon and pressing a silver knife at the base of her throat. "Maybe if you don't want wolfie here to end up as a plaque on my wall, maybe you come with us and don't make any trouble."
Tania looked at her friends, they all moved forward, deciding there was really no choice.
Parker arrived then, seeming slightly out of it. "What's going on?"
"One of Tania's group is the Final Wild Power," Stacia said.
"You can't have missed the blast of blue fire," Cort snorted.
Parker glanced over at Phoenix, who glared at him. Lovers spat? Tania wondered, trying not to smile.
"You're mad," he muttered.
"Yes, I'm mad," Phoenix snapped. "But I'll deal with you later. We have to figure out which one of them is the Wild Power. Move!" she snapped at the others.
They were pushed into a large white van. There was nothing they could do as the door slammed shut and was locked from the outside.
"Now what are we going to do?" Talasai asked.
To make sure they didn't cause any trouble, Phoenix had taken Neona and Fallon in another car. Tania just shrugged helplessly. "I don't know."
She dreaded to think what Phoenix would do to discover who the Power was. Whatever it was, it was unlikely to be pleasant.
* * *
Tania remained standing where she was, letting Parker get closer. A cold wind blew, chilling her. She didn't shiver. Parker, of course, had no idea about her hobby of killing vampire scum like him. Her hand slipped inside her purse, around her stake, and she continued to wait, watching him grinning an animal grin, his eyes shining in the dim light.
"Not going to run? Or scream?"
She laughed harshly. "It takes a lot to scare me, and you don't. Frankly, you're irritating me."
Insulting vampire ego was not a smart thing, one she had learnt from many hard lessons, but still, it was a compulsion she just couldn't help.
What she didn't like was the weird crackly tension in the air as he came ever closer. There was something hovering around the two of them, almost like a silver curtain. She wondered vaguely if he could see it.
He reached out to grab her arms, and she yanked her stake out, ready to strike it home. As he leaned to grab her bare skin, the same thing happened that did the other night.
Sparks seemed to shoot, like being electrified, and her vision was going strangely pink. Parker glared at her in helpless fury.
"What the hell are you *doing?*" he demanded.
"I'm not doing it!" she shouted back, moving away from him, holding the stake in front of her, more to protect her from the strange connection rather than him.
And then everything got even stranger. As she moved backwards, Parker suddenly sprang forward, knocking her down. A fast blur of something brown appeared, knocking Parker off her.
Tania's head hit the concrete and she blinked as lights began to swirl around and her vision began to waver. There was a *wolf* attacking Parker. Was she seeing things right? Where the hell did that come from?
She sat up, and for a moment, wondered if she was going to be sick, she took several deep breaths, managing not to be. The wolf howled then, and she smiled a little, watching Parker glance at her, the wolf, and suddenly turn and run.
"Tania?"
Tania blinked again as she focused on her friends, running down the road. Shelia and Talasai helped her up. Tania glanced over at the wolf, who wasn't a wolf anymore, but a girl about their age. Her hair was a mop of dark brown curls, her eyes glowing silver. She looked somewhat familiar.
"Tania what happened?" Neona asked.
Tania frowned. "That's what I'd like to know." She looked over at the werewolf.
Much to her already growing surprise, the werewolf girl looked a little hurt. "You don't remember me?" she asked Tania.
Tania's frowned deepened, as she tried to place where she'd seen the girl from before. Memories were starting to rise in her mind, of laughing and giggling when cartoons were fun, and new toys were exciting, sad times when she'd been alone, and a little girl had asked her to come and play...
"My God," she said. "Fallon?"
Fallon smiled a little. "You do remember."
"Yeah. You're a werewolf?"
Fallon nodded. "Hmm. I couldn't tell you because there were rules about it, and that bitch of a sister of yours would go blabbing if I told. But you..."
"Yeah, I know," Tania said. "The Night World, everything. We're Daybreakers."
"What's going on?" Neona asked.
Talasai frowned. "Maybe we should find somewhere a little more private where you two can explain what's going on cause the rest of us don't have a clue."
Tania nodded. "Fine. But I don't have any more ideas than you do."
* * *
Part 7
Phoenix paced up and down, waiting for Cort and Stacia to come back with their report. Somehow, she knew Parker couldn't be trusted anymore, so she'd sent them to spy on him, and if he didn't do what she'd told him, they'd tell.
The door to the study opened and she looked up as they came in. Cort was shaking his head in disgust. "Parker really is an idiot," he snorted.
Phoenix frowned. "Why?"
Stacia sat down in the large office chair behind the desk, crossing her elegant long legs. "Because Parker told Tania he was in love with her."
Phoenix stopped dead. "What?"
"He followed her home, she caught him, asked why he was following her and the stupid asshole said he was in love with her. Then he seemed to get hold of himself and went to kill her, and there was something weird in their air that was a lot like a soulmate connection," Stacia said.
Phoenix shook her flame-coloured head, not wanting to believe what they were telling her. How could they do this to her? She had trusted Parker, God, even loved him. And he had bitterly betrayed her.
Anger seethed inside her, boiling, making her fists clench in rage. Cort seemed amused.
"What's so Goddamn funny?" she snapped.
"It's kind of ironic really, isn't it?" he said. "You don't expect your boyfriend to be your baby sister's soulmate."
"Adopted sister," Phoenix snapped.
"That's the thing I don't get," Stacia said. "Your family are Redferns. Redferns are vampires. They despise humans, they're the ones who want to destroy the world when the millennium comes. So why the hell would your parents adopt a little human?"
"Maybe Tania *isn't* human," Cort suggested. Phoenix and Stacia stared at him. He stared back. "Oh come on, you can't say you haven't noticed how much the girl looks like a Harman. She has the eyes and the hair and everything. Hell, even a necklace with a fucking dahlia on it."
Phoenix frowned. Maybe he was right. She turned to her dad's file cabinet and began searching through it until she found Tania's adoption file.
She yanked out Tania's birth certificate. Cort and Stacia looked out.
"Well, what'd ya know?" Cort said, seeming rather smug.
Phoenix ignored him. Everyone got to be right at least once in their life. "She was christened Tatania Harman-Redfern."
"So she's half witch, half vamp," Stacia said.
Cort frowned. "What happened to her parents."
Phoenix frowned. "They were killed by vampire hunters. Tania once told me her mom said she was going to do something special and help save a lot of people."
"Maybe we find Tania and get her to tell us what the hell's going on," Cort suggested.
Right twice in one night. He was on a roll.
* * *
Part 8
Tania and her friends sat around a table in a local Night World coffee house, The Full Moon. Due to the large number of Night People on the small island, there was booming business for cafes like this and clubs like the Black Iris chain. Tania finished the story about what happened with Parker. Both times when she'd been confronted in a fight with him, this weird electric sparky thing had had been hanging around them, as if it wanted to electrocute them.
"It sounds like a soulmate connection," Neona said insistently.
Tania glared at her. "Will you stop that? It's not soulmates!" she snapped. "Maybe he's in love with me, but that doesn't change anything. I hate him!"
Shelia's lips curved into a smile. "Are you sure?"
Tania ignored this, and turned her attention to Fallon, who had sat there silently. "Why were you suddenly there?"
Fallon frowned. "I was hunting in the woods, on my way home and I saw him. He was going to hurt you."
"I could have taken him," Tania said, annoyed. "I'm a vampire hunter."
"And you live with a family of vampires?" Shelia asked.
"That always surprised me," Tania admitted. "Why would a bunch of vampires - Redferns, nonetheless, adopt a human."
"Because you're *not* human," Fallon said. "You're the Fourth Wild Power."
Tania blinked. "What?" She realised all her friends were looking at her, looks of surprise and disbelief on their faces.
"Oh God, how could we have missed it?" Neona said. "I should have seen it."
"Seen what?" Tania asked, feeling her annoyance rise.
"You have Harman traits - the pale gold hair, the violet eyes," Talasai pointed out. "One of your birth parents must have been a witch."
Tania didn't know what to believe. She sat there in silence, not really listening. A witch?
"Remember that necklace your mom gave you?" Fallon asked.
Tania blinked. She reached under the collar of her sweater and pulled the chain out. The black flowers glittered in the light of the candle on the table. "Yeah."
"Then you know what species the two flowers stand for," Fallon said.
Tania frowned. "Black iris is for lamia, black dahlia is for witches."
"So you're half and half?" Neona asked.
"No," Tania said instantly. "I am *not* a vampire. Vampires are scum."
"Thank you," Talasai said dryly.
Tania flushed. "Well, most vampires. Besides," she added, "if I'm a vampire, how come I've never needed to feed?"
Fallon shrugged. "Half breeds don't need to use their vamp powers. You don't need to feed the vampire part if you don't want to use your vampire powers."
"Your adopted parents might have known this," Neona suggested.
"How come no one told me?" Tania asked.
"Maybe because the Redferns are the bad guys," Fallon suggested. "They want all the Wild Powers dead. If Daybreak have less than one Wild Power then the darkness will win, it's inevitable." She quoted, "Four to stand between the light and power/Four of the blue fire, power in the blood/Born in the year of the Blind Maiden's vision/Four less one and the darkness triumphs./"
Tania didn't say anything. Her? The Wild Power? There were other half breeds out there, there had to be? She remembered her mother again, telling her one day she would do something that would help a lot of people. Did her mother mean she would help the other Wild Powers save the world?
"I don't know how to use any witch powers, or vampire powers," she said finally.
"That doesn't matter," Fallon said, sounding eager. "Daybreak will train you, along with the other powers. The third Power we found, Iliana, she's like you, she's a lost witch who's learning to use her powers. They're training all the others too."
"If you're the Wild Power then you've got to hide," Talasai said with a frown. "Phoenix hates you enough as it is. Imagine what she'd do if she knew you were the Wild Power."
Tania frowned. She was right. Did Phoenix already know? She'd sent Parker to try and kill her once. It wasn't likely she would stop at that. She did not want to be confronted with Parker again. The same thing had happened twice when she'd been fighting with him. She didn't like the thoughts that were starting to form in her mind. A sinking feeling that was telling her that maybe Neona was right. She remembered talking to her Daybreak friend Mary-Lynnette Carter who had talked about discovering her own soulmate, about how at first she had hated him, and how the connection was not pleasant in the least. But then...he changed, and the soulmate connection became more pleasant.
Tania shook her head abruptly. Just because the same thing had happened to Mary-Lynnette and Ash didn't mean that it was going to end up like that with her and Parker.
"Okay," she said finally. "Let's go."
They paid their bill, and left the café to find themselves confronted with Phoenix and a group of Night People waiting for them.
"Go!" Phoenix ordered.
And a fight broke out. Tania found that the Night People under Phoenix's orders somehow seemed to be coming at her more than the others. Phoenix herself wasn't taking part in the fight, she stood back, directing everyone else around.
Tania plunged her stake into the heart of one of the vampires, jumping back at it reached out, clawing at her, it's knife slicing into her cheek. Pain struck, sharp and stinging.
A scream sounded, and she glanced over to see Neona and Sheila backed into a corner, with nowhere to run, their witch fire was glowing, but it didn't seem to be having much effect.
And Tania got mad. That wasn't right. It wasn't fair. As she felt her anger well inside her, something else seemed to be blooming too. Something from deep inside her, a part that had been hidden and was now waking.
And the blue fire erupted from her in a blast of heat, hurtling towards the Night People attacking her friends. The blast flared to an unbelievable brightness. When it cleared, the figures in black were gone. Phoenix was still there, along with Stacia and Cort. They were surrounded by a sort of red-gold glow. They were all staring in disbelief.
"One of them's the Wild Power," Stacia said, amazement clear in her voice.
"Who?" Phoenix asked.
Tania didn't know what to think. They didn't realise it was her. On one point, a plus for her. But...would it be a downside for everyone else?
With a moment faster than the eye could see Phoenix suddenly sprang forward, grabbing Fallon and pressing a silver knife at the base of her throat. "Maybe if you don't want wolfie here to end up as a plaque on my wall, maybe you come with us and don't make any trouble."
Tania looked at her friends, they all moved forward, deciding there was really no choice.
Parker arrived then, seeming slightly out of it. "What's going on?"
"One of Tania's group is the Final Wild Power," Stacia said.
"You can't have missed the blast of blue fire," Cort snorted.
Parker glanced over at Phoenix, who glared at him. Lovers spat? Tania wondered, trying not to smile.
"You're mad," he muttered.
"Yes, I'm mad," Phoenix snapped. "But I'll deal with you later. We have to figure out which one of them is the Wild Power. Move!" she snapped at the others.
They were pushed into a large white van. There was nothing they could do as the door slammed shut and was locked from the outside.
"Now what are we going to do?" Talasai asked.
To make sure they didn't cause any trouble, Phoenix had taken Neona and Fallon in another car. Tania just shrugged helplessly. "I don't know."
She dreaded to think what Phoenix would do to discover who the Power was. Whatever it was, it was unlikely to be pleasant.
* * *