Dark Destiny (Principatus) (16 page)

And yet he still lived. In one piece.

Not only that, Death, the supercilious bitch, had not succumbed when he had attacked her. According to the last Fate, Death would be weak when he found the lifeguard. Well, he had found him. Had a metaphysical lock on him, so why was Death not coughing up a rat-filled lung right at this moment?

Tapping his nails, now dagger-tipped claws dripping disease, against the armrest of his throne, Pestilence stared without interest at his bed and the naked succubus chained to it.

He could not, would not believe the last Fate had been wrong. She had never been wrong in her four millennia of existence. It was not possible she had been this time.

No. Everything she had said was true. He knew it.

But time was running out. Within the next moon cycle the thinning of the veil between his world and the human world would reverse and his opportunity would be lost. He needed to eradicate the problem of the lifeguard soon. Very soon. Otherwise he would be in danger of failing and he would not let that happen. He was not going to let some pathetic, weak, feeble mortal take from him that which he had lusted for, planned for, for the last millennium

He needed to tap his source. Hard.

He needed answers. He needed to know Patrick Watkins’ weakness.

Now.

Before his only window of opportunity closed.

He remembered the chill of the wind and the cold, white light of the sun. That was always the first memory Patrick had of the moment in time he’d come to think of as the “event”.

The early morning wind gusted across Bondi Beach, uncommonly cold, even for mid-winter, its icy breath cutting into his face, whipping up grains of sand and tearing at the ragged peaks of the crashing waves. The stark, heatless sun bleached the angry surf and empty beach to a washed-out grey, leeching the color from the world, turning it into a monotone of chilly stillness.

Out on the waves bobbed six surfboard riders, Bluey the most senior. They crested each irritable peak, disappeared into the trough and popped up again. Of the six only Patrick’s second-in-charge challenged the waves enough to put feet to board. Passion and insanity was always a thin, tenuous line for the die-hard surfer.

Standing on the empty winter beach, the collar of his windcheater turned up in a futile effort to protect his face from the elements, Patrick watched his work mate maneuver onto the arcing face of a six-foot curl. The mad man rode it with all the grace of a dancer…until the wave turned nasty and smashed him into water. A jolt of fear tinged Patrick’s startled laugh and he’d cringed, knowing Bluey was fine—no wave yet had bested him—but feeling his mate’s pain anyway. A wipeout like that would be spoken of for decades to come. Bluey’s pride would take a beating even if his body hadn’t.

Turning from the sight of his right-hand man scrambling back on to his board and paddling back out past the breakers, Patrick shook his head. They were all insane. He loved to surf as much as the next bloke, but it was bloody freezing, the surf was a messy bitch and he had paper work to do. Just because it was winter, didn’t mean he didn’t work.

Slapping at his biceps in an attempt to ward off the chill, he began walking toward the patrol tower.

And stopped.

A man stood on the high-tide line about twenty feet away, neat black suit doing nothing to hide his thin, almost scrawny build. His lank, dark hair fell over his pasty white forehead, brushing at his eyes and Patrick frowned. The Nor’wester was blasting up the beach. How could the man’s hair not be moving? And come to think of it, why didn’t he throw a shadow? What the hell was going—

The man turned his stare from the surfers out on the waves to Patrick, and before Patrick could blink, the unmistakable hum of a million insects filled his ears and the undeniable stench of dying flesh filled his nose. Thick and cloying.

A soft groan vibrated up Patrick’s throat and he gazed back at the man, his gut beginning to churn. Something was not right with the man, the wrongness rolled from him in thick, suffocating waves Patrick could not see but sensed all the same. Something beyond Patrick’s ability to understand and yet he understood it all too well. Understood and accepted it with calm terror.

This man was the “something” Ven had warned him about. The “something” chasing him his whole life. The “something” of his nightmares.

This man was—

The Disease.

The title—no other term described the two words—screamed through Patrick’s head in a deafening whisper almost drowning out the roar of the insects. The man smiled, yellow, jagged teeth glinting in the cold sun, and a wave of sickness rolled through Patrick. Just like that. One moment he felt fine, the next he wanted to throw up.

The man’s smile stretched wider, revealing more teeth. An impossible number. All jagged, all yellow. All dripping viscous saliva.

Patrick’s stomach lurched. His flesh grew clammy. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead, his upper lip. He frowned, swallowing convulsively. Fuck, he felt sick.

The man watched him, smile growing, teeth elongating, the very air around him writhing with infection and the tiny bodies of a million locusts.
Yes.

Patrick sucked in a breath and it filled his being, painted his mouth and the back of his throat with the stench of illness, hideous illness, the illness of decay and putrescence. His stomach rolled. A violent shiver claimed his body. Sweat leeched from his pores, icy beads of opaque moisture stinking of the smiling man before him.

Yes.

The man’s smile turned into a smirk, his pale blue stare never wavering from Patrick’s face.

Yes.

Patrick’s knees buckled. He saved himself just before stumbling to the sand, his body shuddering, burning up. His stomach rolled and churned and flipped, his mouth flooding with sour bile, acrid saliva. Insects crawled all over him, in his eyes, his nose, his ears. Heart thumping, pulse pounding, he rammed his palms to his knees, forcing himself upright. If he collapsed to the ground he would drown in his own vomit. Of that he had no doubt. He had to fight. He had to fight the sickness and the swarm trying to overwhelm him. He couldn’t let them overpower him.

The man in the black suit with the lank hair and the yellow teeth continued to smirk, his blazing blue eyes locked on Patrick. Refusing to let him go.

Sucking a shaky breath and a thousand bugs in through his nose, Patrick stared back. He was losing. Whatever fucked-up battle he was in, he was losing. His life spent being chased by something in his dreams, his brother killed for reasons he’d yet to understand, and it all came down to this. This man and his radiating disease and flying insects. This beach. This frozen, icy moment. Fury rolled through Patrick. Fury and fatal understanding. He’d never felt so sick. He’d never felt so weak. Weak. Fuck, he felt weak.

The man’s smirk became a grin. A saliva-dripping grin of triumph.
Yessssss.

Patrick gagged, staring at the man through a curtain of locusts. Incapable of looking away even when his stomach wanted to erupt from his body. God, he wanted to throw up. He was going to choke on the diseased crap his stomach ruptured up his throat and he couldn’t stop it. He was going to drown in his own blood-tainted, insect-filled vomit and he welcomed it. At least when he died he would no longer feel so sick, so ill. God, he felt so fucking sick. Jesus, please let him just drown in his vomit so he could—

“G’Day, Wato!” A young boy ran up the beach, surfboard tucked under his arm, his face flushed with joy.

Ricky!
Patrick shouted, but nothing came from his mouth, his throat choked with vomit and bile and bugs.
Jesus, Ricky. Run away. Go!

“The surf’s a bitch today,” Ricky called, running straight for the smiling, shadowless man. “Knocked me on my arse I dunno know how many times. And didja see what it did to—”

He ran through the man.

Jesus, Ricky! No!

The man’s shape devoured the teenager, engulfed his body like hungry fog swallowing a lost lamb.

And then Ricky stumbled from the man’s form, eyes wide and blank, skin white and ashen and collapsed to the sand.

“Ricky!”

Patrick’s scream finally tore from his throat, thick and raw. He surged forward, plunging to his knees beside Ricky’s motionless body, his stare locked on the teenage boy’s pale face. “Ricky?”

Blood oozed from Ricky’s now closed eyes, streaming down his sweat-slicked cheeks to join the blood seeping from his nose. He shivered, a savage rattling of his body that made Patrick’s chest squeeze.

“Oh, fuck, Ricky?”

Patrick put his hand to the boy’s forehead, hissing at the scalding temperature of his flesh. He was burning up. Christ, he felt on fire.

Another shudder wracked through Ricky and he convulsed—once, twice before blood spurted from his mouth, a great gush of blood and vomit that stank of rotting organs and flesh.

Patrick reeled backward, staring at the shuddering teenager. Stared in horrified disbelief as the kid’s clammy skin suddenly erupted in weeping, pus-oozing sores. As fresh blood burst from his nose, his ears. As his eyes rolled to white, sinking into his head until they looked like pits of putrefied jelly.

It is beautiful, isn’t it?

The hollow voice slid into Patrick’s ears and he jerked his head up, glaring at the man standing over him. “What did you do to him?”

The man grinned, yellow teeth shining in the cold morning sun, lank, dark hair motionless in the rising wind.

I gave him perfection.

Deep, bottomless fury roared through Patrick, incinerating the terrible sickness churning in his gut. Explosive heat—
golden
heat—surged through him. Heat so pure it purged his body of the man’s poisoned smile and turned the insects to ash. He stood, Ricky’s motionless frame at his feet, the wind lashing at his face, and looked straight into the man’s smug eyes.

The man raised his arm, reaching for Patrick with fingers tipped in long, hooked claws.
And the Disease shall destroy the Cure and the end shall be begun.

“No!”

The shout ripped from Patrick’s throat. Scalding heat crashed through him, a tsunami of fury and rage and something else so elemental he couldn’t identify it. He stared at the man and without knowing how, elevated Ricky’s surfboard up from the blood-soaked sand and drove it straight into the grinning bastard’s gut.

Without moving. Without touching a thing.

The man—the Disease—lurched backward, eyes bulging, mouth agape. His claw-tipped hands smacked against Ricky’s board buried in his flesh, gouging great chunks in the fiberglass. He stared at Patrick, fear detonating behind the incredulous disbelief in his eyes.
How?

Patrick stared back, something undefinable boiling in his soul.

How?
The silent question squealed from the man’s gaping mouth, and then a dark scowl contorted his pinched, weedy features.
NO! I will not let this be!

He jolted forward, arms outstretched, surfboard jutting from his gut.

Patrick lashed out. Golden heat roared through him. Engulfing him. Consuming him.

The man flung backward in a screaming blur.

And disappeared mid-arc.

Just like that. Leaving Ricky’s surfboard suspended in the air for a split second before it fell to the sand with a thud.

Patrick stared at the empty air for what felt like a lifetime, his mind gibbering at the man’s disappearing act. His blood roared in his ears, his gut churned and then he dropped to his knees beside Ricky.

The boy was not moving. The sand he lay on was red with blood.

Pressing his fingers to Ricky’s neck, Patrick searched for a pulse.

None.

Not even a weak flutter.

“What the
fuck
?”

Bluey’s gasp jerked Patrick’s head up and he stared at the ring of surfers surrounding him, their eyes wide with shocked confusion, their faces as washed out and bleak as the winter sky behind them.

“Fuckin’ hell, Wato!” Bluey dropped to his knees beside Patrick, studying Ricky with a quick, skilled eye. “What happened? Have you called the ambos?”

Patrick shook his head. “He just…” He stumbled, not sure what to say. What
did
he say? That Ricky ran through a man who didn’t throw a shadow and came out the other side dead? He looked up at the other surfers and asked the question for which he already knew the answer. “Did anyone see the bloke in the black suit? He was standing right here.”

Blank faces. Just blank faces.

“Bloody hell, Wato,” Bluey murmured, searching for Ricky’s pulse. His jaw bunched, his Adam’s apple jumping. He ran his hands and gaze over Ricky’s lifeless body, confusion etching his seasoned face. “The kid was just on the waves. He was just out there. Laughin’ with us. Whingein’ about goin’ to school today. He didn’t look sick. What happened?”

Standing in his living room now, staring out the window at the relentless summer sun already beginning to bake the world outside, Patrick closed his eyes. The cold wind and the white sun was always the first thing he remembered about the event but it was his last words spoken to Bluey before calling the paramedics that haunted him.