Dark Destiny (Principatus) (17 page)

“I don’t know.”

The denial still tasted like poison on his tongue. Three years later and he could still feel the numb guilt those words caused in his core.

I don’t know.

He
did
know, but he’d spent the last three years refusing to think about what that knowledge meant. He’d shut it out.

Patrick closed his eyes and leant his forehead against the cool glass of the window. Until today, until the demon in the water and on the sand, he’d refused to “use” whatever abhorrent abilities lurked within him. Not since the confrontation with the shadowless man in the black suit that horrific winter’s morning. Three years with no warning, no further contact from the strange man. He wanted to believe it didn’t exist. It couldn’t exist. Hell, even Ven had started to relax somewhat. Life was normal.
He
was normal. As the days passed, Patrick all but convinced himself the event on the beach, the surreal face-off with the man in the suit—
the Disease
—had been just another all-too-vivid nightmare. Reality cocooned him and he’d all but forgotten it.

Until now.

The appearance of Death, the unseen attacker in the surf, the sand creature on the beach, the arguments with Ven, the man in the suit appearing in his nightmares. Reality was unraveling around him once again, and once again, whatever…power…polluted his being had resurfaced and he could no longer fool himself. He wasn’t normal. He’d never been normal.

“So, what
are
you, Patrick Watkins?” he muttered.

The Cure.

The ambivalent words whispered in his head and he pulled in a long, shaky breath. What the hell did that mean?

The cure to what? And if he was the cure, why did he feel so goddamn sick?

Thirty-six years of flashes of the future, knowing things before they happened, and for what purpose? Had it stopped his parents’ car inexplicably swerving off the road and wrapping around a telegraph pole? Thirty-six years of moving objects, not just the television remote, without touching them and to what end? Had it saved Ven from dying? From becoming a vampire?

No.

He sighed, the sound angry and desolate. “What in the name of all things holy am I the cure to?”

“I can tell you the answer to that,” a low, slightly husky female voice said behind him. “I think.”

He turned, his gaze falling immediately on Fred and his stomach clenched at the sight of her, his already unsteady heart kicking up a notch. She stood in the middle of his living room, soft black leather pants emphasizing her long, toned legs, a black INXS tank top hugging her glorious curved torso. She studied him with those piercing eyes of hers, their glacier-blue depths apprehensive and bold at the same time. A searing twist of tension knotted in his gut, making his breath quicken and his groin tighten. What was it about her that made his body flush with a simmering heat? That made him feel like a hormone-crazy teenage boy?

It wasn’t just that she was gorgeous—she was, but it was more than that. More than a physical reaction. Every time he looked at her, came close to her, it was as if his body and his soul recognized her on a deeper level, the missing half of his existence he didn’t know was lost.

He shook his head and turned back to the window, gritting his teeth. After everything he’d been through today, after all the paranormal shit and the run-in with Ven, here he was getting horny and wistful and goddamn Mills and Boonish at the mere sight of a creature that may or may not be planning to end his life. He was insane.

“What are you doing here, Death?” he asked, not turning to look at her. It was safer that way.

Really? Safer? Then why is your pulse pounding? Why are your palms itchy and your balls throbbing?

A soft sigh followed his question. “I figured if you wouldn’t come with me I would come back to you.”

“To do what? Kill me?”

Heavy silence filled the room, and for a moment Patrick wondered if Fred had left. A sharp stab of disappointment speared into his chest and he bit back a growl. Damn it, he was fucked up.

“Not to kill you, Patrick.”

Fred’s whisper caressed the back of his neck and, before he could stop himself, he turned. He gazed down into her eyes, his throat so tight he could barely breathe, his thighs brushing hers, his chest rubbing against her nipples. “To do what then?” he repeated, voice strangled.

She looked up at him, her heat folding around him, seeping into his body. Warming him from the icy embrace of the event’s haunting memory. “This.”

And she went up on tiptoe and touched her lips to his.

Chapter Seven

Ven snarled, pushing through the crowded Kings Cross street. He’d never been so hungry. So pissed off.

So desperate for a pair of bloody sunglasses.

He glared at the hot morning sun hanging low above his head, drowning him in ultraviolet rays. He hadn’t needed a pair of sunglasses for over eighteen years. His old pair of Ray Bans were probably at home somewhere, maybe tucked in his underwear drawer along with the boxers he’d stopped wearing the night he’d become a vampire.

At the thought of his transformation, his demon growled, making a push for release. His control was weakening, the hunger for blood gnawing at his core like an insane monster…which it was. An insane, ravenous monster cringing at the daylight.

If he wasn’t so hungry, he’d stop and buy a cheap pair of sunnies from a street vendor. But he
was
hungry. Damn hungry.

Shouldering his way through a gaggle of tourists snapping a multitude of photos of God knows what, he made his way for Amy’s apartment. She lived above a vegetarian café a few blocks away. If he pulled in a deep breath now, he could almost convince himself he could taste her scent on the air already.

His stomach growled, almost as loudly as his demon.

Fuck, he was hungry.

Unbidden, an image of Death flashed through his head, a carnal reminder it wasn’t just blood he craved. He scowled, hissing at one tourist foolish enough to come too close. The man’s sweat threaded into Ven’s breath, sweet with salt and minerals. Hot saliva flooded his mouth.

He swallowed, tongue pressed to his fangs. The desire to lunge at the man, sink his nails into his bony shoulders and throw him to the sidewalk surged through him. He could all but feel the warm coppery fluid of the man’s lifeblood trickle down his parched throat.

The muscles in Ven’s face shifted. The light burned into his eyes. Sound amplified. He could hear the man’s heartbeat. Could hear the man’s blood flow through his thin, delicate veins, pulsing under his thin, vulnerable flesh. Waiting to be sucked from his neck in deep, long pulls. Waiting to be—

Ven snapped his fists closed, sinking his nails, no, his claws, into his palms. The pain stabbed into his bloodlust and he bit back a growl. Fuck. He was close. Too close to becoming lost to his demon. He needed to get off the street immediately. He needed to lock himself away from the sun, away from the cattle around him until he could sate the thirst in his body with Amy’s blood.

And after he’d fed, after he’d gorged his demon on the bright red fluid, he’d sate the other more carnal lust in his body.

Again, an image of Death filled his head, pale limbs bare, eyes smoldering with pure white energy. The demon in her called his and a surge of wet electricity shot through him, making him growl once more.

Louder. More bestial.

A woman hurrying along the sidewalk gave him a startled look. She stumbled, her eyes bulging, and it was only then Ven realized he no longer wore his human façade. He was in vamp mode. The early stages, but vamp mode all the same.

Fuck.

He spun on the spot, taking in the gawking, gaping people around him in the blink of an eye. Their confused fear leeched from their pores in sweet, delicious waves. Their hearts leapt into deafening tattoos, pumping their blood around their bodies in delectable, irresistible rivers of—

Get out of here, Steven. Now. Before you tear open someone’s neck and bathe yourself in what gushes from the wound.

The thought made him giddy, and for a dangerous, terrible, wonderful moment, he languished in its evocative power. His stare locked on a tall, slim female dressed in running shorts and a sports bra to his immediate left, the thump thump of the pulse in her neck like a beacon to his hunger. Her skin was golden and warm. He could feel her heat radiating from her healthy perfection from where he stood. She favored a macrobiotic diet. She preferred to drink white wine, not red. The last meal she’d consumed that day had consisted of tofu, egg whites and tomatoes.

Saliva oozed from the glands in his mouth and he touched the tip of his tongue to his fangs. It would be the last meal she ever ate. When he was through with her, she would be nothing but a drained shell, an empty sack of bones and—

Fear and disgust smashed into him and he froze. Jesus. What had he just been about to do?

Feed.

Staring into the woman’s shocked eyes, struggling to shut out the delicious taste of her scent in his nose and on his tongue, he dropped down into a crouch. He needed to get away. Before he could no longer deny the monster within and fed on the blood pumping through the veins of those around him.

He leapt upward, launching himself directly to the sky. He didn’t care if the humans saw him. Really, who would believe them anyway? A pale-skinned bloke with fangs and yellow eyes, dressed in jeans, biker boots and a white polo shirt defying gravity in the centre of Kings Cross in the middle of the morning?

Pushing through the humid morning air, he drew an image of Amy’s small apartment into his whirling, screaming mind and folded space.

Warm, summer wind streamed over his face and bare arms as he moved through the empty space above Kings Cross. He knew he was not man, nor bird, nor beast, but something else. Something like the very wind lashing at him. A black and blonde blur of substance slicing through the sky, indefinable and unfathomable, even to himself, let alone the humans he’d left on the ground.

The feeling of freedom was immense—exhilarating—as was the inexplicable, inherent knowledge he could travel this way for miles if he needed to. This was more than folding space. This was defying physics. Defying existence.

He surged forward, smoke on the air and, seconds later, stood at Amy’s door. Hungry. Really hungry.

Dragging in a long, steadying breath, Ven forced his muscles to relax. He needed to reel in his demon. He’d come so very close to doing the one thing he swore never to do after his transformation—feed from an unwilling human. It was the second time in less than sixty minutes that he’d almost done so. First his brother, then the unknown female on the sidewalk. Self-disgust rolled through him and he sank his nails into his palms again. He’d always prided himself on not being the monster fate had delivered him to be. He’d suppressed the urge to tear open the neck of any human nearby and gorge himself on their blood. Shit, since becoming a vamp he’d never attacked or drained anyone, although he had come perilously close to the latter the first time he’d fed from Amy. His grueling control over the seductive pull of his demon was, in his mind, what kept him human. If he didn’t behave like a monster, he wasn’t one.

Yet even now, standing at Amy’s door, his tongue still tingled, his stomach still growled with the imagined intoxicating taste of Patrick’s blood. The frustrated, infuriated impatience he felt over his brother’s stubborn refusal of the situation made it all too easy for his demon to rise to the surface. Couple that with the ravenous ache in his stomach—damn, he’d never been so hungry—and he was a walking paranormal time bomb.

A time bomb quite capable of tearing a bloody great big hole in his only brother’s neck.

Another wave of self-disgust crashed through Ven and he ground his teeth. He
was
a monster. A creature of base, carnal needs. It didn’t matter how hard he fought with himself, how hard he tried to convince himself otherwise, the long and short of it was, he was a fucking vampire and less than an hour ago he would have quite willingly drained his only brother of every last drop of blood.

Contempt reached into his chest and squeezed his lifeless heart in a tight fist. Just what the hell
was
he? Man? Brother?

Killer.

The mental whisper sent a dark ripple down his spine. His canines began to elongate, his muscles to burn. Eager to strike.

“No.” His growl sliced into the silent hallway and he punched the edge of his fist against his forehead. He wasn’t going to succumb. No matter how pissed off with Patrick he was.

Why not? You’ve spent a lifetime looking out for Patrick. Shit, you’ve spent your
death
looking out for him too, and to what end? He doesn’t appreciate it. He doesn’t deserve it. Think about what it would mean to succumb to what you really are. You’ve seen the demon in Death. It calls to you just as surely as your demon calls to her. Think about what you could have, what you could do, what you could
be
if you stop thinking about your brother and thought about yourself instead. Think about who you could be with…

An image of Death exploded in Ven’s head and he slammed his hands to his face, squeezing his eyes shut. No!

Blood roaring in his ears, teeth ground together, demon screaming for release, he turned from Amy’s door. He couldn’t be here. Not now. He didn’t know what he would do if he—