Dark Destiny (Principatus) (32 page)

Nothing in his life had pointed to an ancestry of such…
divine
…significant heritage.

Except for predicting the future on more than one occasion? Or resuscitating drowning victims seemingly beyond saving?

“Bloody hell,” he muttered, pushing himself to his feet. He shook his head in disgust at the conceited train of thought. “Next you’ll be throwing a barbeque for all the swimmers on Bondi with just one fish, a loaf of bread and a bottle of water.”

Moving around the small room again—damn, what he’d give for a door—he wondered what Ven was doing.

A sudden realization struck him and he bit back a curse. He’d yet to ask Fred what she thought his brother had become. What exactly did a second-order demon mean? Ven was obviously more than he once was and if it wasn’t for the fact they
both
were now targets for the First Horseman, Patrick would have a wonderful time giving his brother all sorts of hell. He grinned. If he survived this, he was going to pay back thirty-six years of nagging and lecturing.

If you survive this? What if
Ven
doesn’t survive this?

The black thought sent a shard of numb unease into Patrick’s chest and he ground his teeth. Ven was a target now. The attack from the
q’thulu
wasn’t just a random incident. Shit.

A desperate sense of helplessness began to build in his chest. Trying like hell to ignore it, he searched the room again, looking for an exit.

What? The one you know isn’t there?

Shit.

He needed to get to Ven. He wasn’t safe. He was—

Stop it.

Pulling in a deep breath, Patrick force himself to calm down. Ven was fine. He was no doubt at this very moment with Amy, sating his long-denied hunger and, knowing his brother, probably sating his other more carnal appetites as well.

Patrick chuckled, dropping back into the armchair and crossing his ankles on the low table before him. “Good onya, brother,” he murmured, settling himself in to wait for Fred’s return. “Enjoy your self.”

“Amy!” Ven roared. Just as bleached-white talons sank into her pale, bowed neck. The demon shrieked again and a swarm of black locusts spewed from its maw, engulfing Amy in a second.

“
This
is the power of the First Horseman,” Pestilence screeched, gaunt face a white mask of insane fury and rapture. “
This
is the might of the Disease, of Pestilence.”

The swarm of locusts turned into a frenzied black cloud, whipping around and around Amy, their wings slicing the air like razors. They raged over her, Pestilence’s arms disappearing into their writhing mass, his hold on Amy hidden by their massive number. “
This
is the fate of the Cure.” His skeletal shoulders bunched, his arms snapped wide and the wet sound of tearing flesh filled Ven’s ears. Amy’s scream pitched higher, and then died on a thick gurgle. Pestilence grinned, eyes burning with vile yellow flames. “And the world of man will suffer in my wake.”

He turned to Ven. The locusts rose above him, swirling above his head before streaming back into his body through his laughing mouth, his flaring nostrils. Revealing the decimated corpse they’d left behind.

Amy dropped to the floor with a hollow thud, her neck torn open, her face, the face Ven had kissed a hundred times, lacerated and shredded to nothing but a bloody mask of flesh and bone.

Pestilence smiled at him, once again wearing his deceptive human shape. “And so ends the first act of the First Horseman. Now, call…your…brother.”

“No.”

Ven’s cry rent the very air, a tortured wail of absolute grief. His mind cracked, his soul shrieked. The human he’d once been and the Principatus he’d only so recently become screamed with agonized horror…and then, fell silent.

Destroyed completely by the engulfing blackness of absolute sorrow and guilt.

Patrick stood frozen, Fred, the Realm, the upcoming battle and his bloodline forgotten.

An overwhelming, total knowledge his brother was dying flooded through him. No words. No images. No sounds. Just a terrible knowledge Steven was dying.

“Ven?”

His brother’s anguish smashed through him, a force of unending grief and hate and guilt.

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.”