DERANGED DESTINY; J. HALE [5]

FOURTEEN; CAKE

MY ABILITY WRAPPED itself around Edward as instructed. Our friends watched me as I stared intently at Emmett, trying to guess what we was thinking of. My mind briefly casting back to when we did this 2 years ago when I was first turned.

He was easy to read. "Yes, Emmett. It's working. And no, we are not letting you rip off Aro's head if you get the chance" I paused. "That's my job"

Our audience chuckled and Zafrina looked at me. "You're a pro at syphoning now. Well done"

"All thanks to you" I walked over and grabbed her hand. "Seriously, I couldn't have done this if it wasn't for you. So thank you"

Her head gently bowed and she squeezed my hand. "You know, it doesn't take a psychic to see that this will all turn out good. I can feel it"

The room erupted in various battle cries and encouraging messages. It made me happy to know we had so many people we could count on and that would fight for us. I didn't quite trust all of them, but for the most part they were amazing.

I heard her thumping feet before I saw her, she wasn't the stealthiest vampire hybrid I had ever seen, but she was a toddler now, so I gave her that. Soon she'd be older than me, I bet.

"Pops!" My arms encased her as she ran into me, I swung her up in the air and stuck her safely on my hip. "Where's daddy?"

That was the question we all wanted to know, since Jasper was the one that was meant to be looking after her while we did this.

As if on queue, a very tired looking Daddy Jasper vamped into the room, covered in cake batter. I shot him a funny look, as did most of the people in the room - it wasn't really his style.

His hands flew up in defense. "She wanted to bake a cake for you all, but..she's so messy!" This was Jasper's worst nightmare, being the clean freak that he was.

My eyes drifted to Poppy, who was completely clean of any cake mixture. "Is that right?" She nodded proudly. "You're so sweet! We would've loved that right?"

"Yes Poppy, we would have - thank you" Zafrina gently pat her head and squeezed her cheek.

"Daddy is not as good at baking as you" Poppy's head shook as she clung to my hip and we all laughed. My eyebrows lifted to her as she tried to dig herself out. "He is good, but you are better" In my peripheral I could see Jasper dusting himself off.

He motioned to me. "Yeah, yeah, yeah - mum is better at baking. But who's your favourite to go hunting with?" Pops nodded to Jasper and he threw his hands up in victory. "Booyah! That's right. It's me!"

I let Poppy slide down my hip and her feet touched the ground gracefully. "Why don't we get dad cleared up?" She grabbed my hand and pulled me over to Jasper. "Yeah, lets go. We can give the rest some peace to talk" The rest of the vampires in the room nodded at me as we excited through the door, leaving them to continue talking battle without Poppy's prying ears.

We had gotten Jasper cleaned up and he was no longer covered head to to in flour and eggs. Poppy found it very, very funny when we couldn't get some cake batter out of his ears.

Bella and Renesmee sat with all of us. We had spoken about not letting Pop and Ren listen to much about the Volturi just yet, we would eventually tell them once they had both reached full maturity but it was too much to handle just now. They both knew that we were all training to fight, but we couldn't tell them the fight was actually about them.

The girls were playing dolls on the floor while we sat on the couch. They were good together, somehow understood each other. Poppy even liked to call Renesmee her sister, which made me really happy inside. Although they both were around the same age and growing incredibly rapidly, none of us were worried. Somehow we knew we would have all the time in the world with them.

Poppy stood up and walked over to us, showing us her doll. It looked like her, it had shoulder length, red curly hair - and it was just as beautiful. She placed it in Jasper's hands and he took it from her, pretending to make it move and speak. She laughed along with him singing, finally holding her arms out to get it back. "Can I have it back please?"

He nodded and held her hands with the doll. "Yes, of course" His face changed when they touched skin but she quickly pulled away. "What was that Pops?"

My face showed confusion. "What was what?" Bella looked the same, the both of us not sure exactly what was going on.

"Can I hold your hand again?" He held out his hand and Poppy nodded it, taking it gently. His eyes closed shut and he smiled. "I can feel everyone's emotions"

"What's different?" He spoke like feeling emotions wasn't a usual thing for him.

His eyes opened but he still held Poppy's hand. "I mean - I can feel Bella's, and yours. And.." He focused, I could practically see the cogs turning in his brain. "I can feel the rest of them too. My abilities don't usually go that far"

"Do you think it's Poppy?" Bella sat forward and Renesmee was behind her stood to attention, watching us. "Maybe she has an ability, like Renesmee?"

Renesmee had the ability to project her thoughts onto others. It was the complete opposite of Edward and Bella's power. So maybe, Bella had a point.

"I can see it" Poppy spoke. "I can see waves around daddy"

"Waves?" His eyebrows lifted. "I think, I think she's enhancing my ability"

It made sense. She gently let go of his hand and walked over to me. I stuck out my own hand. "Try it on me" She nodded and grasped me, her own eyes closing in concentration. I wasn't exactly sure what to feel. My abilities were unlike any other. I felt nothing. She opened her eyes back up and shook her head. "It didn't work"

"Don't worry. You did good! This is great. You can help daddy with his ability. You should feel proud" Her face beamed as I spoke, happy that she was contributing something.

I didn't think I could possibly love Poppy anymore, but the fact that she had a power that went hand in hand with her fathers made my heart swell beyond all boundaries. It was possible that her ability was the opposite of mine and Jasper's. I could syphon powers, she could enhance them. It would come in handy in later life, I just knew it.

With the battle slowly looming in I was getting more and more nervous each day. It would only be a matter of time before we were free of all this madness, or corpses lying in a field. But I knew one thing for sure. We would't be going down without one hell of a fight.