Dark Destiny (Principatus) (10 page)

A cold ripple of guilt slipped up her spine, singed at the edges by her desperate, consuming need and she shivered.

Oh, God, what if she couldn’t give him what he asked for? What would she do then?

You’ll give it to him, Amy. No matter what it is, you’ll give it to him. If he asks you to kill your mother, you will. And you know it. For the burn he gives you, you’ll do whatever he asks. Whatever.

The horrifying thought ate its way through her head, down into her chest to the pit of her stomach, and she whimpered.

Because it was true. As horrible and hideous as it was, anything the vampire asked of her, she would do. Anything.

After the pleasure and pain he’d given her this morning, she was close to no longer caring.

The beach is deserted.

Except for the woman standing at the far end, near the houses rising from the eastern point. Still, quiet houses bereft of life and light. The sun sits high on the horizon, a burning ball of angry orange fire that casts the beach with a cold, vomit-yellow glow.

He runs along the sand, the tiny grains slicing into his feet, his stare fixed on the body on the high-tide line near the flags.

He needs to reach him before the woman does.

Heat surges through his muscles and he increases his speed. He’s taken too long already. If he doesn’t reach the body soon he’ll never revive—

He kneels beside the body, staring hard at the lifeless man, searching for a pulse. Nothing. Peabody is—

The woman steps up to him, her striking blue eyes watching him as he punches Peabody’s motionless chest.

“He’s dead, Patrick. You’re too—”

Late. The day grows late. He runs along the empty beach, watched by empty houses. A body rolls listlessly in the slush waves on the sand before him. Tumbling over and over, snatched by the waves, dragged back into the surf and then spewed up onto the wet sand once more. He starts to sprint. Shit. How could he have missed—

The sand bites into his knees as he drops down beside Mr. Peabody. The man’s eyes bulge from his white, bloated face, as if he’s seen—

Death leans over his shoulder.

“Patrick.”

Her voice is soft. Seductive.

“Leave him be. I am here for—”

“You.”

The voice, a guttural growl, makes Patrick stumble. He looks around the empty beach, searching for the speaker, his heart thumping hard. He knows that voice. Like he knows his own name. It belongs to—

Pestilence.

The shadows reach for him, the cold sun sinking behind the flat line of the ocean, painting him in sick red blood. He swallows, turning back to the patrol tower. He had paper work to do before heading home. He has to write the report for Peabody’s—

Resurrection
.

The sand slices into his knees, like a million diseased fire ants devouring his flesh. He looks down at the man lying on the ambulance stretcher, his fat, black tongue poking from bloated lips, his eyes closed, his skin still wet from the sea.

“He is gone, Patrick. Let him be gone.”

Death whispers in his ear and his cock throbs, desire burning through him in a wave more powerful than any he’s ever surfed.

“Time to acknowledge who you are so you and I can continue what we started in your—”

He looks up from Peabody and his stare falls on a man casting no shadow on the sand. A small, thin man with lank, dark hair and glowing yellow eyes. A small, thin man in a black suit, watching him. Staring at him with malevolent hate and fury.

“You are not going to stop me, lifeguard.”

The man’s whisper shatters Patrick’s eardrums. He slaps his hands over his ears, dropping his head to his chest, teeth grinding together.

And watches Peabody open his eyes.

The corpse looks up at him with bulging, empty eyes and before Patrick can move, Peabody’s hands wrap around his throat and fingers of ice sink into his neck.

“Time to die, Patrick Watkins.”

“No!” Patrick snapped bolt awake, sucking in breath after ragged breath. He looked around his bedroom, the pale, weak light of predawn filtering through the curtains, turning the furniture into a collection of indistinct, looming shapes.

He raked his hands through his hair and flopped backward onto the mattress. Jesus. What a nightmare.

Staring blankly at the dark ceiling for a moment, he fought with his hammering heart, forcing it to steady.

Okay, two nightmares in one night was just not on. This is what he got for going back to bed while Ven went off hunting Fred.

An image of the woman insisting she was Death popped immediately into his mind, destroying the residue ghosts of his nightmare. He ground out a groan of frustrated disbelief. He saw her all too easily, naked limbs smooth and firm, belly toned, breasts high and round.

His body stirred, the terror of his dream forgotten.

Another groan rumbled in Patrick’s dry throat and he threw himself off his bed, his feet hitting the floor with a thud.

Normality seemed to be unraveling around him. He was turned on by a woman who may or may not have murdered a man with just a single touch of her fingertips, who called herself Fred and somehow turned up in his bedroom in the middle of the night. A woman Ven insisted was the Grim Reaper, who was almost half his brother’s size yet strong enough to fling him across the room like he was a rag doll.

A woman capable of making her clothes
and
herself disappear before Patrick’s very eyes.

Normality unraveling.

Like it had before.

Frowning, he crossed to the cupboard and snatched his work clothes from the top drawer. He wasn’t going to think about that. He’d pushed that particular “unraveling” to the back of his mind and that’s where it was staying. No one knew about it, not even Ven, and it served no purpose thinking about it now. What he needed to do
now
was get dressed and get to work. It may be only—he shot the clock beside his bed a quick look—five a.m., but it was the middle of summer. The sun was beginning to break the horizon and that meant there’d be swimmers and surfers already hitting the waves in the faint predawn light. Swimmers and surfers who needed to be watched over. Protected from danger. From…

Pestilence.

Patrick’s chest squeezed tight at the unexpected thought and an image from his dream smashed through his head. A man in a black suit who didn’t cast a shadow on the sand. A familiar man.

“Stop it,” he snapped, his frustration turning into self-contempt.

He yanked on his shorts and left the room, tugging his shirt over his head as he went. He wouldn’t let normality unravel again. Not again. He’d barely recovered the last time it had happened.

Maybe Ven
is
right? Maybe you are something—

“Jesus bloody Christ, Watkins, stop it! You’re a lifeguard. That’s it. You’re not some goddamn savior of the human race.”

The jog to work passed in a blur of denied memories and denied images. Memories he didn’t want to dwell on, memories of strange occurrences he’d never told Ven about, strange “accidents” he couldn’t explain but almost cost him his life. Memories of a shadowless man on a deserted beach. Staring at him. Wanting him dead.

Images he
wanted
to dwell on a lot, too much. Images of the mysterious woman, images of her naked, stretched out on his bed, waiting for him to join her, waiting for him to make love to her until they both climaxed, screaming each other’s name.

The crunch of sand on concrete under his feet snapped Patrick from his torment. He blinked, his attention turning to the empty car park around him and the dawn-quiet stretch of beach before him. He was at work already?

He looked at his watch. 5:07 a.m.

Patrick frowned. Shaking his wrist, he brought it up to his ear. The battery must be flat. He’d left home at 5:05.

The soft, almost inaudible
tick tick tick tick
of tiny mechanics slipped into his ear and he frowned again, dropping his arm. His watch, it seemed, was working fine.

Normality unraveling, Patrick?

Refusing to acknowledge the squirming tension in his gut, he took the stairs up to the patrol tower’s door two at a time and let himself into the building. He’d punch in and then hit the water. Perhaps all the swimming required to check out the surf’s conditions would clear his head. After that he’d work through the morning’s paper work, pitch the safe-swimming flags and then call Ven. His brother was probably settling in for the day by now, and he wanted to touch base with him.

To ask if he’d found Fred?

Squirming tension twisted through his gut again, lower this time. Almost in his groin. He bit back a groan. His brother had most likely spent the night chasing a paranormal Peeping Tom and all Patrick could think about was the deranged woman herself? ’Struth, he needed a swim. He only hoped the surf was still cold.

It wasn’t. But despite its pleasant temperature, it achieved what he wanted it to. As he swam out past the shallow sandbar of the beach’s eastern end, any thought of the mysterious woman, the shadowless man, the memories he’d long denied vanished, replaced by the calm meditation of stroke after stroke after stroke.

The outgoing tide pulled gently on his body as he moved through the water, not too strong but there all the same. The waves were small and peaky, barely more than six feet, a leftover from the larger southern swell out beyond the shark nets. This would be the ideal patrolled swimming area for the morning. He rotated in the surf, treading water for a bit as he triangulated his position with the patrol tower back on the beach, committing to memory his location and where exactly he would erect the flags.

Turning back to the open sea, he headed toward Backpacker’s Express, the undercurrent growing stronger the closer he swam to the rip. Even still, it was a mild undercurrent. Perhaps the infamous, dangerous strip of water was playing nice for a change.

Swimming directly into its pull, Patrick uprighted himself, treading water to gage the rip’s real strength. He smiled, feeling the current pull at his body with little force. Unless there was a major change in conditions the rip was unlikely to claim any unsuspecting victims today, which meant he and Bluey and the rest of the team might have a relatively relaxed day. Well, as relaxed as any day on a beach populated by over forty thousand people, the majority of which were overseas tourists who’d never set foot on a beach before, let alone—

Something grabbed his right foot.

Hard.

And pulled.

He went under the water, his whole body tugged a good five feet or so below the surface. Cold, salty water surrounded him. The grip on his ankle grew harder. More insistent.

He kicked out, trying to dislodge the—

The what? Seaweed?

Icy fingers sank into his ankle with what felt like needles puncturing his skin.

Patrick kicked again, dragging his arms through the water in an effort to release the hold on his leg and reach the surface. Jesus, his lungs felt on fire.

What’s got you? What dragging you down?

He didn’t have time to ponder an answer. Whatever it was, it was pulling him deeper.

Cold water pressed against him, filled his nostrils. He blew out a burst of precious air through his nose, the released bubbles churning past his face in a chaotic storm, surging for the longed-for world above.

Fuck, he needed to breathe!

He kicked again, opening his eyes against the briny ocean, desperate to see what had him. Seaweed? Fishing net? Shark?

The dark, dawn water revealed nothing. He could barely see his thighs, let alone what gripped his—

Something grabbed his knee. Something stronger.

Cold terror roared through him. He sucked in a gasp and icy-cold water poured into his lungs.

Christ. He was going to drown and he didn’t even know what the fuck had him.

Focus, Patrick. Focus.

A wave of powerful calm rolled through him, quelling his crippling fear. He kicked, his foot and shin striking something dense and solid below his waist, his trapped leg thumping what felt like a body.

The water churned around him in angry agitation. Became hot. Hot.

He lashed out, picturing his foot smashing against whatever held him.

Something pierced his knee. Nails? Claws? Teeth? A surge of absolute rage ripped through him, hotter than the heavy water pressing against him. He kicked again, the unformed image of his assailant shuddering with the savage force of his blow.

Christ! He needed air! He needed to breathe!

Another kick. Another mental attack.

The hands on his ankle and knee slipped. The water displaced around him, a sudden surge of icy temperature engulfing him from below. He struck out again, dragging his arms through the water, pulling himself toward the surface even as he attacked whatever held him. Picturing its unseen form reeling from each delivered kick.