Dark Destiny (Principatus)

by Couper, Lexxie

  She’d heard his furious snarl in her mind the second she’d arrived back in the Realm, her sex still squirming with unexpected pleasure from Ven’s savage kiss, her head still spinning with confused conflict. She’d had time to notice her reflection in her mirror—to note the troubled white glow in her eyes and the swollen bruising on her lips—and then, bam! Patrick’s voice had roared through her head, sharp with rage and fear. Fuck. It’s trying to tear me in two!

  Instantly and without thought, she’d locked her very existence onto his location and transubstantiated, arriving in the world of man just in time to see him destroy the aqueous demon with nothing but a stare.

  That can’t be, Fred. No one can destroy a third-order sub-demon without a weapon. Even if it is a water demon on land.

  She watched him study the minute particles of the annihilated nikor whirling through the air around him, his expression revealing nothing. He gazed at the floating grains of sand before, with a silent groan, he collapsed to his knees, head hung low.

  A fierce, intense wave of concern crashed through Fred, an utterly alien emotion she’d never experienced before. She frowned. Concern? For a human?

  But he’s not human, is he Fred? He can’t be. Not if he can destroy a sub-demon with…with…

  With what? His mind?

  She didn’t care. Patrick, whoever, whatever Patrick was, was hurt. He needed help. He needed care and she wanted to be the one to give it to him. Wanted it more than she’d ever wanted anything in her infinite existence. There were questions to be asked, but she would ask them later. Starting with—

  “How the hell did you do that?”

  The sound of Ven’s shout smacked into Fred with almost as much force as Patrick’s earlier roar and she jumped, spinning to her left to stare at the man standing but a few feet away from her. Or should that be vampire standing but a few feet away from her? A vampire fully exposed to the new day’s streaming solar rays.

  The dawn sun painted him in a warm golden glow and for the first time, illuminated by natural daylight, she noticed the strawberry-blonde accent to his shaggy hair, the faint smattering of light brown freckles across his hawkish nose.

  And then the obvious hit her and her mouth fell open. He wasn’t burning to a screaming, vaporized crisp.

  He was a vampire. He was standing in the sun. How could he not be burning to a screaming, vaporized crisp?

  Like an explosion of fire ants, her tailbone erupted in a violent itch, the very same ominous itch that forewarned trouble in the Realm, and she choked back a gasp. Well, almost choked back a gasp. A soft hiccup of breath sounded in the back of her throat, barely audible even to her ears, but it was enough to make Ven spin in her direction.

  He vamped out instantly, the beautiful dawn light illuminating his demonic features in stark, unavoidable detail. “You!” he snarled, and if she hadn’t been a creature of myth herself, Fred would’ve missed the instant coiling of finely honed, paranormal muscles as he prepared to lunge at her.

  But she didn’t miss it. And neither did his brother.

  “Steven!” Patrick yelled. “Stop it!”

  The vampire seemed to freeze, his stare—locked on her with deadly, menacing intent—flaring bright red for a split moment, before he turned back to Patrick, his human façade flowing over his features once again.

  Fred studied his profile, and then swung her gaze back to Patrick. A groan of dismayed realization vibrated up her throat and bit back a curse. Her sex remembered all too easily the erotic electricity of Ven’s demon-tainted kiss, but her heart, her very core, throbbed with a smoldering heat she could not name nor fathom whenever she thought of his brother.

  Oh, no. This can’t be happening.

  “What are you doing here, Fred?”

  Patrick’s deceptively calm voice made her jump.

  She looked at him, mouth drier than the sixth level of hell. “Umm.”

  He cocked an eyebrow, his eyes green mirrors that revealed nothing. “Umm?” Blood still trickled over his sculpted body, tiny rivulets that reminded her with harsh reality he’d just fought and beaten a nikor.

  “I heard you,” she blurted out. Her answer made her flush and she ground her teeth, frustrated and embarrassed. Damn it, once again, he was making her flush like a schoolgirl.

  “You what?” Ven snarled.

  Fred swung a quick look at the vampire before turning back to Patrick. “I heard you. In trouble.” Her cheeks grew hotter. “So I came.”

  “Why?”

  “A very good question, brother,” Ven growled. “Especially since she’d just spent a considerable amount of effort trying to keep me where I was.”

  Fred started. “What?” Did he really think she’d been trying to distract him while an aqueous demon attacked his brother? “Wait just a damn minute. I’m not the bad guy here, okay?” She jabbed a finger at Ven. “You shouldn’t be standing out in the sun without turning into a char-grilled drumstick, extra crispy, and you—” she turned her scowl on Patrick, wishing to the Powers her heart would stop squeezing whenever she looked at him, “—just pulverized a nikor, a third-order sub-demon, to dust with no weapon I can determine.” She crossed her arms across her chest, giving them both a long glare. “So don’t be making out I’m the only one here with answers to cough up.”

  The same puzzled frown pulled at Patrick and Ven’s foreheads, and Fred would have burst out laughing at the almost comical sight if she wasn’t so pissed off. With them and her stupid, stupid libido and stupid, stupid heart. Usually her emotions and sex drive were in perfect sync. It had never been otherwise, despite an eon of lovers, both demon and human. What was she now doing wanting both of them? She didn’t need this. Not with her tailbone itching so goddamn violently.

  “How did you destroy that beastie, brother?” Ven asked, his earlier concern returning to his eyes. “Cause the Reaper’s correct. I didn’t see you wielding a gun or a sword or even a bloody big broom and yet the sandy bastard is no more.”

  “How come you haven’t turned to a pile of dust, Steven?” Patrick shot back, clearly not interested in answering. “And what do you mean, she’d just spent a considerable amount of effort trying to keep you where you were?” He narrowed his eyes. “Where were you exactly, and what kind of effort?”

  Fred flicked her gaze from one brother to the other. Uh oh, she didn’t like where this was going. “Listen.” She stepped between them, holding her arms out to the side. “Far be it for me to interfere with a family squabble, but the beach at daybreak is not the place to discuss this. I’ve claimed more than one soul jogging along the sand at this time of day, I know how busy this place is going to get any moment now, and quite frankly, we’re already starting to draw a crowd.”

  She let her gaze slide to the few early-morning risers walking or jogging past them, their expressions curious, almost troubled. Uncomfortable. They’d only be seeing two men arguing—she was not visible to anyone except Ven and Patrick—but it was enough to make her edgy. There was something much larger than she first thought going on here, something that made the battle of Jericho seem like a schoolyard fight, and for some reason, she felt like a sitting duck. Like she was being played.

  Someone had sent a nikor after Patrick. And there were only a few entities capable of doing so. Four, in fact. And she sure as shit knew she hadn’t sent it.

  Fred curled her hands into tight fists by her side.

  Pestilence.

  Shooting the crowd, the ocean and the rising sun a harried look, she turned to Patrick. “I’m sorry, but we’ve got to get out of here.”

  Steady, indecipherable green eyes studied her. Weighed her up. She waited, knowing she couldn’t rush this. She still had no idea who Patrick was, no idea why Steven could withstand daylight, but she knew one thing, the answers to those questions would decide their very fate.

  She wasn’t the Fourth Horseman, the ultimate bringer of the Apocalypse, because she looked good in black.

  When she needed to,
she could kick serious first-order demon ass.

  “Patrick,” she spoke his name, and a ripple of scalding tension warmed the pit of her belly. “Come with me. Now.”

  “Hey!”

  Ven’s indignant growl made her turn her head and she grinned at the vampire, sensing his demon rise close to the surface of his control in protective agitation. “You too, fang face.”

  He bared his perfectly human, perfectly perfect teeth at her, but she was already turning back to Patrick. It all came down to Patrick. Whatever it was, it started and ended with the lifeguard.

  She needed him on her side. Until she figured out whose side he really was on.

  “Patrick?” she said again.

  He studied her, impenetrable eyes never wavering from her face, and then shook his head. Once. “No.”

  She bit back a growl of frustration. Damn it, that wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear. Suppressing the urge to just snare him in her hold and transubstantiate him back to the Realm, she took a step toward him, fixing him with a level stare. “Patrick. Please.”

  His jaw clenched, but before he could refuse her again, she took another step toward him. “Please.” She reached for his hand. “Come with—”

  Something pushed her backward. Something she couldn’t see but felt with no problems at all. Something hard. Something strong.

  “I said no.” Patrick’s angry voice punched into her, an echo of the unseen force shoving her chest. She stumbled, her boot heels sinking in the beach’s soft sand, her arms pinwheeling to keep her balance. By the Powers, what was pushing her?

  Her gaze snapped to Patrick’s face and she gasped.

  He was glaring at her, his expression both angry and lost at once. But it wasn’t his expression that shocked her. It was his eyes. Normally a light green, they now burned a dark, dark emerald. So dark they almost appeared black.

  Her spine erupted in a violent itch, making her cry out with pain and, yes, fear. What was going on? Without thought, she snatched out for Patrick with her mind, locking him in an inescapable psychokinetic hold. Whether he wanted to or not, she needed answers. It seemed Pestilence wanted him removed from existence for reasons she didn’t know and that made her uneasy. She needed to get him back to the—

  She went flying backward in a wild, abrupt arc. Struck in the chest again by the same invisible blow.

  Her ass smacked the sand first, followed by her palms, elbows and the back of her head. Her teeth snapped shut, sinking into the tip of her tongue and a galaxy of black stars exploded before her eyes.

  What the?

  Incredulous fury shot through her. She surged to her feet, uncaring of the humans hovering around them. How dare he? How dare—

  Patrick was gone. Walking toward the car park. Away from her.

  “Hey?” She locked her stare on him. What the hell? How could he be walking anywhere, let alone away from her? “Hey!”

  She took a step forward, ready to run after him, prepared to tackle him to the ground if she must, when, in a sudden blur of color, Ven stood directly in her path, eyes glowing yellow.

  “You heard him, Reaper.” He gave her a cold, menacing grin, the tips of his fangs glinting in the sunlight. “Now, fuck off.”

  Without waiting to see her reaction, he turned on his heel and followed after Patrick, his tall, lean frame relaxed and, she had no doubt at all, completely ready to tear her apart. “Oh, and one more thing,” he threw over his shoulder, not deigning to look at her as he moved with fluid ease across the uneven sand. “Stay the fuck away from my brother.”

  Fred stared after him, after them both, her tailbone itching, her heart pounding. She watched Ven take two blurring steps, defying space and speed until he fell into place beside Patrick. Watched the two men—so alike from behind she would have had difficulty telling them apart if it wasn’t for Patrick’s naked torso and sun-kissed skin—move through the car park until they were blocked from her sight by a garbage truck.

  She stood still, the early morning sun heating her cheeks, the weight of everything that had just transpired stealing her breath. For a moment, she toyed with the idea of going after them. She could overcome Ven easily enough, even if he could survive sunlight…well, she assumed she could, and as for Patrick…

  The thought faded away. And Patrick what? She’d just witnessed him destroy a nikor with the Powers knows what, he’d shoved her halfway across the beach without lifting a finger, let alone a fist and her attempt to hold him with her mind had failed miserably. Something entirely impossible. No one could escape the grasp of Death, no matter who or what they were. No one.

  And yet, Patrick Watkins just did.

  Beyond frustrated, she huffed into her fringe. Answers. She needed answers, and standing here, gaping after two annoying, irritating, stubborn and unfortunately sexy-assed brothers wasn’t getting them.

  With a sharp sigh, she dragged her fingers through her hair and transubstantiated.

  Straight into the Realm’s library.

  The room, one of many all the entities and first-order demons could access at will, glowed with warm light. The squat table lamps positioned on either side of two large leather armchairs illuminated the wall-to-wall bookshelves and open fireplace.

  She dropped into one of the chairs and kicked off her boots. A small trickle of sand spilled from each one onto the rug beneath her feet and a wry smile pulled at her lips. Even in the Realm she couldn’t escape the Australian lifeguard.

  Hah. Escape him? That was the last thing on her mind.

  An unexpected image of Patrick—wet from the surf, muscles coiled and pumped with blood—filled her mind and her belly tightened. Damn it, she needed to focus on the situation, not how sexy the Australian lifeguard looked. How was she to discover what was going on if she kept daydreaming about him?

  Without invitation, Patrick’s brother popped into her head as well, sardonic expression making her sex constrict, pointed fangs making her palms prickle.

  She dropped her head into her hands and groaned. She was in trouble. Big trouble and it was all the damn Watkins brothers’ fault. How dare they be so damn sexy and mysterious and…and…

  Grinding her teeth, refusing to admit to herself just how irrational and childish that last thought was, she conjured the first book from the top shelf and opened it.

  It seemed Pestilence wanted Patrick Watkins out of the picture for some reason, but why? Hopefully the answer could be found in one of the books in this room.

  Scanning the pages of The First Horseman and the Case for Human Eradication, a heavy, pompous and ancient tome, she blew at her fringe in disgust. Nothing. Its author, a second-order seraphim, had been infatuated with Pestilence’s power over man’s health, livestock and crops, and had spent far too many pages babbling on about why man should be made to suffer. Apart from clichéd ideas and tired rhetoric however, it offered nothing. No mention of Patrick, Steven, a vampire who could withstand daylight, hell, not even a passing reference to Australia or the beach.

  She conjured another, this one with the delightfully antiquated title, How the Horsemen Shall Punish Man. Honestly, why half the Realm’s population hadn’t kept with the program and realized the idea of the Apocalypse had been benched eons ago was beyond her.

  She skimmed through it, finding nothing but an overuse of words like annihilation and obliterate, before discarding it with a growl.

  Forty-one books of the same theme and style later and she wanted to scream. No mention of Patrick or Steven Watkins in any of them. Forty-one books and all she had to show for it was a headache, a growing detestation for the word “thou”, and an insane urge to round up the authors and give them all a damn good beating. Seriously, were there no decent writers in the Realm?

  Running her fingers through her hair, she pulled another book from the shelf and read its title. Of Men and Demon. Catchy.

  She flicked through its pages, made, she suspected with a curl of her nose, from cured flesh, scanning each one for anything o
f—

  The brother who cannot walk in the sun shall cast a shadow on the shifting grains of glass, and the shadow shall be of blood.

  Fred’s heart smashed against her breastbone and she read the sentence again.

  The brother who cannot walk in the sun shall cast a shadow on the shifting grains of glass, and the shadow shall be of blood.

  The brother who cannot walk in the sun shall cast a shadow? Surely that had to be a reference to Ven, the only vampire she knew of who could withstand sunlight? But on the shifting grains of glass? Grains of glass? She gave the book’s cover another look, noting the author. The last Fate. Cautious excitement tingled in her veins. Maybe the old biddy finally sprouted something of significance, instead of the usual cryptic mumbo-jumbo she’d been known for before her unexplained disappearance.

  She reread the line, trying to garner more information from it before reading the paragraph before it. A growl rumbled in her throat. Nothing relating to or referencing Ven or Patrick at all. Just forty or so sentences carrying on about the relationship between seraphim and archangels and how they interacted with virgins of mankind’s sixteenth century.

  The next ten paragraphs after the tantalizing line were the same. The last Fate really seemed to be hung up on the sex lives of the upper-order angels, describing their mating rituals in great detail and an awful lot of very purple prose.

  Fred huffed into her fringe again. It was as though the line about Ven just popped out of nowhere.

  She read the rest of Of Men and Demon word for word, hoping there might be something else, but there wasn’t. Damn it.

  The Powers alone knew how many books later, and she was beginning to get well and truly pissed off. Nothing. Nothing! Just a waste of time, an even bigger headache and an entirely rational desire to strangle just about every author in the Realm. Once she’d put them back together after tearing them apart the first time, that was.