Oh, Jesus, Ven.
He looked about himself, frantic. Fred’s study offered him no answers and no exit. He had no way of leaving, no way of calling her and no way of knowing when she’d return. Damn it, he was useless.
Another wall of concentrated anguish hit him, claimed him like a devouring shroud. A snarl burst from his lips. Fuck this, his brother was in trouble. He had to leave.
Where is he?
Without knowing exactly what he was doing, Patrick drew the memory of Ven’s essence into his mind and core.
Nothingness.
Emptiness.
A cold fist reached into his chest. He had to find Ven. He had to find his brother and save him. Like Ven had saved him, protected him all these years. He had to return…
“Home.”
The word formed on Patrick’s lips, a second before his body became molecules of existential dust, moving through space and time, from one dimension to another. From the Realm to the…beach.
Patrick stared at the empty expanse of Bondi Beach, the late dusk sky the deep, wounded purple of a fresh bruise, stretching on forever, the shifting grains of sand swirling about his feet in the hot, gustless wind.
His throat grew thick. Tight.
The beach from his nightmares.
The beach of the beginning and the end.
Deserted, save for the Disease standing at the high-tide line. Waiting for him, his shadow stretching across the sand, a dark stain on the ever-moving grains.
“Hello, lifeguard.” Pestilence smiled. “Shall we begin?”
Chapter Fifteen
Patrick attacked, hurling a wall of concentrated air particles, twisted and folded upon each other until they formed a force as solid as a steel sheet at the First Horseman.
He didn’t move. He didn’t think. He attacked.
And Pestilence reeled backward.
One step.
Two.
The Disease’s arms flailed. He stumbled backward, the sand puffing at his heels in little balls of displaced grains and then, with a wide grin, regained his footing. “Well, we have been training, haven’t we?”
Patrick glared at him across the distance, the air charged. The deserted beach seemed to shimmer, and for a split second he swore he saw the undefined ghosts of people hurrying over the sand. People there and yet, not there. People dressed in swimming cozzies, enjoying the dying light of the summer day even as their eyes shone with unease, as if their souls knew something they did not. And then the second passed, the ghosts vanished and it was just Pestilence and Patrick. Facing each other on an empty stretch of sand.
“Where’s my brother?”
Pestilence smiled again, adjusting the cuffs of his suit. “This is an interesting development, lifeguard. I did not expect it, I must say. I figured you would choose this location—you seem to be emotionally handcuffed to this pitiful place—but not the dimensional plane. A simple temporal shift and we are here and yet not. Effective. Still, it makes sense when you consider your incessant desire to maintain human life.” He shrugged, a totally indifferent action and Patrick had to bite back the urge to leap forward and ram his fist into his smug face. “It will make no never mind though,” he went on. “When I destroy you, the world of man will fall.”
Patrick balled his fists. “I didn’t choose anything, Pestilence. Now, tell me where my brother is before I tear you a new arse and shove your head into it.”
Pestilence pulled a contemplative face. “You did not? Now is that not interesting? Hmmm.”
A hot ball of anger rose up in Patrick’s chest. He looked at the Disease, drawing on the inert power lying dormant in the air around him. “There’s nothing remotely interesting about this, Pestilence. Sad, yes. Pathetic, definitely, but interesting?” He shook his head.
Pestilence chuckled and took a few steps forward. “Are you not intrigued by this all, Patrick Watkins?” He lowered his attention to his feet, studying the disturbed sand sliding from the black leather toes of his shoes. “How do you have the strength to determine the location of our…altercation…yet not know it? How can you transubstantiate to your brother and still not control your destination? How do you have the ability to propel me backward and yet still be so naïve to leave your guard down?”
A black wave appeared from nowhere. It dwarfed Patrick, blocking out the low sun, casting him in a light-devouring shadow. It crashed down, knocking him to his knees and it was only then Patrick realized what the wave was—a million gnats, their tiny bodies sticking to his face, blocking his nose, his ears.
He thrust out with his mind, slicing into the wave of gnats, carving them apart, sending them tumbling over each other. Crushing them. Molding them. Reforming them.
Into a thick, writhing spear he flung straight back at Pestilence.
They struck the demon in the chest. Hard. Direct.
Pestilence squealed, eyes igniting in baleful yellow hate. His arms flailed, his mouth gaped open.
With a flick of his mind, Patrick sent the gnats down the demon’s throat, a pouring, writhing punch that choked Pestilence’s squeal.
The demon slapped at his own neck, claws tearing at his pasty flesh. His eyes rolled and—as Patrick watched, sweat trickling down his temple—Pestilence stumbled, the wind-lashed sand collapsing beneath his heels until he fell backwards, lost in a thick mass of gnats.
Patrick staggered to his feet, exhaustion making his lungs burn. Gasping for breath, sweat stinging his eyes, he released his “hold” on the insects. If he didn’t, he would pass out. He had no idea how he’d just done what he had—taken Pestilence’s weapon and used it against him—but his body and mind felt scorched. Drained.
He watched the swirling cloud of stray insects blow away in the wind, his patience tested as he waited for Pestilence to move. Waited for him to attack again.
It can’t be this easy. It won’t be this—
Pestilence rose to his feet, eyes on fire, gnat corpses stuck to his chin. “Impressive.” He brushed at his sleeves with one hand and then the other. “You have improved since we last met.”
Patrick glared at him. “Where is my brother?”
Pestilence curled his lip. “Is there nothing more in that pathetic human brain of yours?”
Rage smashed through Patrick. He struck out, hurling a wall of sand at the First Horseman. “Where is my brother?”
Pestilence cried out, arms raised, hands shielding his face from the blasting grains. He stumbled backward, cowering from the onslaught of sand and force.
Pulling more sand from the beach, Patrick flung it at the faltering demon. More. More. Fury fueled him. Fury and fear.
Where was Ven? Was he alive? Dead?
“Where is my brother?” he roared, pummeling Pestilence with grain after grain after grain of raw glass. Slicing at his skin. Stripping it from his bones. “Where. Is. My. Brother?”
“Hey, fuckwit.”
Patrick swung to his left, his stare locking instantly on the strange vampire standing beside the wind-frenzied dangerous-surf flag.
The vamp grinned. “He’s here.”
He shoved something forward, a large something covered in blood that fell to the ground with a boneless thud, looking like it belonged in an abattoir from a horror movie and not on a beach in Australia.
Oh, Jesus…Patrick’s own blood ran to ice and his heart stilled. Ven.
“And now,” Pestilence smirked, rising to his feet. Blood trickled from a thousand tiny wounds in his flesh and a foam of black vomit dripped from his mouth and nose. Swiping sand from his shoulders, he crossed the beach to Ven’s motionless form and shoved his foot between Ven’s shoulder blades. “So are you.”
A heavy knot of fury twisted in Patrick’s chest. “Let Steven go.”
Pestilence laughed, his smirk triumphant and smug. “Why would I do that, Patrick Watkins?” He held out his arm and Ven snapped upright, eyes dazed, face bloody and bruised. “While I have Steven, I have you.”
With a wild laugh,
the vampire spun about, smashing Ven in the jaw with his heel. Patrick screamed, leaping forward. Intent on tearing the vampire to pieces.
But before Patrick could destroy the distance between them, Pestilence grabbed Ven’s neck, holding his limp form as if it were a shield. “Not a good idea, lifeguard. Not unless you want me to rip your brother’s throat out. I think even a Principatus would fail to survive such an attack from an entity of my stature.”
“You mean short-arsed and stinky?”
The barely audible mumble came from Ven and Pestilence hissed, a shudder wracking his frame. He flung Ven against the vampire, who snatched his neck in blood-tipped claws, driving him to his knees in the space of a heartbeat.
“He will be dead before you can draw breath, lifeguard,” Pestilence shouted, blazing stare locked on Patrick. “Move and he dies.”
Patrick froze, every fiber of his being feeling his brother’s pain. He stared at Ven’s slumped frame, the sight of his once-pale-but-healthy flesh now sallow and covered in weeping sores, filling him with agony. The sight of his brother’s once-unassailable strength beaten beyond death filling him with misery.
His throat slammed shut. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t let his brother suffer. Not the one soul who’d spent his life, his death, doing everything in his power to protect him. The one person who always knew when he was sad, angry, scared. The one person who sacrificed it all to make sure Patrick lived.
Patrick choked back a sob. He couldn’t do this. Not to his brother. Not to Steven.
He turned from Ven’s shuddering, broken body and fixed Pestilence with a flat stare. “My brother’s life for mine.”
The wind picked up his words. Whipped them from his lips.
Pestilence smiled. Gleeful. Smug. “Of course.”
Driving his fingers into the soft center of his palms, Patrick drew a deep breath. What was to come would hurt, but for his brother he would face it all.
I’m sorry, Fred, but I can’t let Steven suffer for me anymore.
He began to drop to his knees, Pestilence’s stretching grin burning into his brain.
“Yes,” Pestilence whispered, his voice ringing with supreme elation. “Yes. The Cure shall surrender to the Disease and the Disease shall destroy the Cure.”
“Don’t you bloody dare!” Ven’s growl shattered the silence of the beach. A ripple distorted the very air around them and he surged to his feet, arms flinging wide, body transforming into a creature of immense size and might.
“The Principatus!” Pestilence screeched.
Ven spun, massive black wings unfolding from his impossibly wide back, long, muscled arms reaching out to snare the vampire around the neck. His skin, blacker than midnight pitch, shimmered in the dusk, his eyes twin balls of burning white light. “For Amy,” he said, lifting the gibbering, squealing vampire up to his unrecognizable face. “For the heinous creature you are, for the heinous acts you performed.” His voice rumbled, thunder in a storm. “By the decree of the Order of the Agents, by the power of the Principatus, I hereby declare you punished.”
He sank talons the size of daggers into the vampire’s ribcage, just below his armpit and, with barely a shift in muscle, tore the squealing demon in two.
The two parts spurted blood, bright red arching showers that drenched Ven’s black flesh crimson. And then, as the Principatus threw back his head and roared, arms wide, wings spread, both parts fell to dust and were scattered to nothing by the gusting wind.
Patrick stared at his brother, his pulse pounding in his ears. Jesus, is that Ven?
The Principatus turned to look at him, eyes white fire, lips curled away from needle-tipped teeth in a sardonic, cheeky grin. A grin Patrick had seen many, many times before. “Was that too melodramatic?”
Patrick’s laugh took him by surprise. “Well, you always were one for the—”
A shudder wracked Ven’s giant frame, once, twice and he pitched forward, collapsing face first into the sand, changing back into human form before his body came to rest.
“Ven!” Patrick screamed. He sprinted forward, stare locked on Ven’s motionless form, on the blood pouring from his slack mouth and nose and ears, staining the sand around him a dull red. Like a shadow of blood on the beach.
He ran, desperate to reach his brother. To save him.
And was picked up and flung backward by a savage blow of invisible force.
***
Fred fumed. She stormed around the tiny “space” the Powers had afforded her, an area in the whiteness no bigger than the average public toilet cubicle. What the fuck did she do now? She couldn’t leave, she couldn’t return to Patrick, she couldn’t even track down Pestilence and beat the crap out of him. Shit, with the Powers’ ridiculous confinement she could barely scratch herself.
She stomped her foot. “Aarrggh!”
Well, that was entirely childish, wasn’t it, Fred.
Huffing into her fringe, she glared at the ubiquitous white. Yes, it was childish, but it was better than just standing around accepting her fate.
She narrowed her eyes. Fate? Was that who had blabbed about what she was doing with Patrick? The last Fate? Before she’d mysteriously up and vanished from the Realm, had the last Fate gone all soothsayerish and revealed what role Death was planning to play in the confrontation between Pestilence and the Cure?
And what role was that exactly, Fred? Coach? Umpire? Cheerleader for the Cure? You know you cannot directly wage war on your own brethren, even if Pestilence is a megalomaniacal piece of shit that needs to have his skinny ass kicked from one side of the Realm to the other. The Horsemen cannot attack each other, no matter how much you wished you could. To do so would rend the Weave asunder. So, what role were you planning to play? Wingman?
A numb coldness unfurled in her belly. She hadn’t allowed herself to think that far ahead. Once she’d discovered Pestilence’s plan, once she’d discovered all the players involved, she’d been so focused on preparing Patrick, she hadn’t stopped to question what she was going to do once the “battle” had began.
Preparing Patrick? Is that what you’ve been so focused on? Really? Are you sure?
The cold numbness growing in her gut grew icy. Shit. Preparing him had not been her sole focus, even though it should have been. Making love to him had been her primary focus, feeling his body move over hers, feeling his body move in hers… Shit. Instead of trying to equip him for what he had to face, she’d been thinking only of the way he made her feel—alive, wonderful, gloriously amazing. Her own selfish greed may have delivered to Patrick the very thing she was created to do. Death.
Standing motionless, she closed her eyes. By the Powers, what if she never saw him again?
No. She wouldn’t let that happen. Time was irrelevant to her. If need be she’d go back to Patrick in a moment of history…
The rebellious thought trailed away and she let out a sigh. The Powers would prevent her doing so. Of that she had little doubt, and if imprisoning her in the whiteness was their reaction to her falling in love with Patrick, what would they do to her if she broke the first law?
“Fuck,” she muttered. “Fuck fuck fuck.”
“You really need to do something about your language, Death.”
She froze, gaze flicking around the whiteness. Her heart smashed against her breastbone. Was that who she thought it was?
“Yes. It is. Now, tell me, Death. Why do you want to return to Patrick Watkins?”
Fred’s mouth went dry. Should she really answer that question?
“Yes. You should.”
“I love him.”
It was the simple truth.
“Is that the only reason?”
She frowned. The thought of all mankind—children, babies, the innocent, the guilty—destroyed by Pestilence’s ego, by his hunger for power and glory rolled through her. She thought of them all. She thought of Patrick…and shook her head.
“Does there have to be any other?”
Silence answered h
er.
“Does there?”
Silence. And the sense of a low, wise chuckle.
“Well?”
No reply.
Fred frowned. “Well?”
Again. Nothing.
She threw up her hands, shaking her head as she stormed around in…circles.
Circles. Large circles. Circles bigger than a toilet cubicle.
Holy shit, she could move!
***
“Just you and me now, lifeguard.” Pestilence’s voice rose above the wailing wind, his eyes ablaze. “Your pitiful brother has finally exerted all his energy. Not even the power of a Principatus can defeat starvation. Especially when their own blood flows so freely from their body.” He laughed, the sound cold. Inhuman. “As the last Fate foretold, it has come to pass. The Cure and the Disease.”
He laughed again, and as Patrick scrambled to his feet, tiny grains of sand lashing at his face, slicing into his eyes, he saw the First Horseman walk toward him.
No, Patrick. Limp toward you. He’s limping.
Cold hope surged through him and he bared his teeth in a dead smile. Good.
He straightened, glaring at Pestilence. Ven’s lifeless body cut into the corner of his vision but he refused to look at him. He had to end this. Now. “As the last Fate foretold,” he growled, “The Cure shall face the Disease on the shifting dunes and the end shall begin and the beginning shall end.”
The words of the prophesy boomed across the empty stretch of beach, their volume impossibly loud. Pestilence reeled backward, eyes wide. “How do you know those words?”
Patrick gave him a dark grin. “Someone much more powerful than you told me.” Without thought, he threw the beach at the demon. Sand, rocks, metal trash cans, the needles cast aside by junkies. Everything he could reach with his mind, he hurled at the First Horseman.
Pestilence stumbled, arms pinwheeling. His eyes erupted in yellow hate, and suddenly Patrick’s gut cramped.
Every pore in his body seemed to piss acid, every joint screamed as though crushed in a vice. He staggered, stomach surging up through his throat, hot bile and vomit flooding his mouth.
Death, The Vamp and His Brother Page 24
