Dark Destiny (Principatus) (6 page)

He smashed her against the wall, white plaster dust showering down on them both as he shoved her high off the floor one handed, bringing her face level with his own. “What the fuck are you doing to my brother?”

“Jesus, Ven!” Patrick scrambled off his bed. “What the hell are you doing?”

Ven swung his head around, fixing Patrick with a very demonic glare, his yellow eyes an inferno of icy rage. “I told you something was after you, brother.”

Patrick blinked, stunned disbelief killing the powerful sexual hunger in his blood. “What? This woman?”

Fred squirmed in Ven’s hold, her fingers digging into his wrist. “Hey!”

Ven shook his head, the demon fully surfaced. “This woman isn’t what she looks like, brother.” He turned back to Fred, baring his fangs with a low, menacing hiss Patrick had never heard him make before. “This is Death.”

Fred bared her own teeth—white, even teeth that looked like they would cost a fortune at a cosmetic dentist. “I prefer Fred, fang face.”

Something punched Patrick in the gut. At least, it felt that way. He swung his stare between his vampire brother and the mysterious woman from the beach.

“Death?” he said. For the first time in his thirty-six years he did not want to listen to what his gut was telling him. “As in the Grim Reaper? Musty old cloak, rotting bones and antediluvian scythe?”

“Hey!” Fred said again, sounding far more indignant than she should, considering her situation.

He ran his gaze over her, not questioning his brother’s actions at all, just his motivation. If Ven believed the woman was a threat, he wasn’t going to argue—yet. After all, she had killed Peabody with just a stroke of her fingers
and
her clothes had seemingly vanished without a trace, but Death? “I don’t mean to rain on your parade, Steven, but have you
looked
at the woman you’re holding?”

“I
saw
her, brother.” The vampire turned to stare at him, the knuckles of his fingers growing whiter as his grip tightened around Fred’s neck. “The night I died. As I lay on the filth-strewn ground with you desperately trying to revive me, I saw her. She took my soul.” He turned back to Fred, pressing her harder to the wall, his fangs grazing the high angle of her cheekbone with each word he growled. “And now she’s trying to take yours.”

Fred rolled her eyes, and for the first time Patrick noticed she didn’t seem overly fazed by Ven’s strangulating grip. “I’m not trying to take his soul, you moron. I was just…” A soft pink blush flooded her cheeks and she faltered.

Ven glared at her. “Just what?”

Patrick stared at them both. The whole scene was surreal, like something from a late-night television program aimed at teenagers, yet with a bigger budget for the special effects, and tangible, potent sexuality beyond their adolescent experience. The paranormal he could swallow. He’d given up disbelieving in spooks and demons when Ven had walked into their parent’s home six hours after dying, but his overwhelming, powerful and completely undeniable sexual response to the woman Steven claimed ended his life? How could he be so aroused so quickly?

He flicked his gaze to the naked woman still pinned to the wall by his brother and a tight tension pulsed through his cock. Bloody hell, what was going on with him?

Snatching his boxer shorts from the nightstand, he yanked them on, scowling at Ven and Fred who were scowling at each other.

“Just
what
, Death?” Ven growled again, knuckles growing whiter still.

Fred squirmed, the pink in her cheeks growing a deeper shade of red, before she lifted her chin in a clearly defiant angle. “I was just checking him out.”

Patrick raised his eyebrows at her. “Checking me out?” An itch began in his gut and he frowned. “You mean…”

Still imprisoned in Ven’s demonic grip, Fred closed her eyes and shook her head. “This is getting ridiculous,” she muttered.

Her eyelids snapped open, revealing eyes a blinding pure white. She spread her fingers wide and suddenly, as if he were a rag doll, Ven went flying backward across the room, slamming into the far wall with a solid thud.

“
Ooff
.” The grunt burst from Ven’s mouth, the first sound of discomfort and pain Patrick had heard his brother make since he’d become a vampire. He watched him drop to the floor before turning his stare back to Fred.

Or should that be Death?

She stared back at him, eyes ice blue once more, a black pair of leather pants, black biker boots and a black Bob Marley t-shirt covering her body the moment she rammed her fists to her hips. “I
mean
,” she growled, “I was having what you Australians call a perv. I saw you on the beach and thought you were worth checking out again.” She flicked a look at Ven, now stumbling to his feet, Patrick noted, with a stunned and very pissed-off expression on his face. “Of course, I didn’t know you had a pet vampire guarding you.”

“I’m his
brother
,” Ven snarled.

“Or that you could see me,” Fred continued, ignoring Ven. “And while we’re at it, how
can
you see me, and why
is
fang face leaping to your protection like an overzealous fox terrier?”

Fred folded her arms across her chest, fixed Patrick with a hard look and then turned her attention to his brother. She narrowed her eyes, studying the vamp closer. He wore his human face again, almost a mirror of Patrick’s but slightly paler with less life in the seams around his sharp green eyes. She remembered him. His soul had fought the taking with more strength than she’d ever encountered before. Those with a powerful reason to stay attached to the mortal coil always did, but this one’s soul, Steven Owen Watkins’ soul, had resisted the claiming like the world itself depended on his existence.

She remembered being impressed by his strength and tenacious stubbornness. Two traits he obviously shared with his brother. The night of his claiming came back to her in a flurry of shadows and senses. She’d arrived as he lay stretched on the grimy concrete sidewalk, blood oozing like thick red paint from his neck through the fingers of the young man leaning over him, a man she’d paid little attention to at the time but now realized was her lifeguard eighteen years ago.

A deep squirming sensation unfurled in the pit of her belly and she ran the tip of her tongue over the edge of her teeth. Fang face was pretty damn fine, even more so for the simmering demon lurking in his blood, almost as fine as his human brother, but something felt wrong. Something didn’t gel.

She slid her gaze from Steven, to Patrick and back to the brooding, irritable vampire again. Her spine tingled, a soft tickling itch at her tailbone that made her worry. When
that
part of her spine tingled, the place where her spine became her tail when she was in her demon form, it was a warning of mischief in the Realm. That part of her spine had tingled the time the fallen star had tried to alter the spiritual status quo, that part of her spine had tingled the time the serpent started up its conversation with Eve, and it tingled now.

Why?

What was it about the Watkins brothers that set off her internal warning system? How could these two men, okay, this one man and this one vampire, have any impact on the Realm?

“I’ve had enough of this, Death.” Steven took a step toward her, his pale-green stare shimmering yellow anger. “Time to tell us what you’re really doing here.”

“It’s been fun, fang face.” She grinned, ignoring his demand. She flicked another quick look at Patrick and the tingle in her spine exploded into an undeniable spasm of sensations, some of them downright delicious.

He stared back at her, a flash of ambiguous color seeming to shimmer through his deep-green eyes.

Who are you, Patrick Watkins?

She touched her tongue to her lips, tasting him still…and transubstantiated herself from his bedroom. Something was not as it was meant to be, and she needed to find out what it was. Now.

Ven raked his fingers through his hair, staring hard at the empty spot in Patrick’s bedroom only seconds earlier occupied by Death, before turning to glare at his semi-naked brother. “I hate to say I told you so, brother—”

“No, you don’t.”

“But I told you so,” he went on, shaking his head. He crossed the room to the tallboy under the window, yanked open the top drawer, snatched out a white t-shirt and threw it at Patrick. “Well, at least I know who’s after you.” He watched his brother pull the item of clothing over his head, forcing aside the driving urge to grab Patrick and shake him. “What I
don’t
know is
why
you were lying naked on your bed under the Grim bloody Reaper? I’m telling you here and now, the sight of your erect dick will scar me for life.”

Patrick gave him a dark look. “Don’t you mean will scar you for undeath?”

“Ha ha. There you go again with the lame undead jokes, but it’s not going to work this time.” He folded his arms, fixing Patrick with an equally dark glare. “You’ve got some explaining to do, little brother. What the hell was going on?”

Patrick didn’t say a word. Not for a long moment anyway, and for a second Ven thought he would need to give his brother a kick up the arse. Until Patrick released a harsh sigh and dropped onto the side of the bed, looking up at him with unreadable eyes. “I don’t know what’s going on, Ven. I wish I did.”

Ven frowned. “Maybe we should begin with how Death came to be stark naked and straddling you like a rodeo rider on a prize bull?”

Patrick flashed him a cold grin. “Thanks for the simile, Ven. I keep forgetting you were a journalist before becoming a hellish monster.”

“Still am a journalist, brother. Just freelance now.” He dropped onto the bed beside Patrick. “How else do you think I pay my bills? You don’t become an instant millionaire the second you become a hellish monster, you know. I still have an electricity account, a water account, a phone account, a cell phone, a—”

Patrick raised a hand. “Yeah, okay, I get the point.”

“But
I’m
still missing one. The point about you and Death naked?”

“I woke up and she was in my room. We argued about Peabody, I grabbed her and suddenly she was naked.”

Ven raised his own hand. “Wait a minute, I’m missing half of that conversation. Who the bloody hell is Peabody?”

Patrick let out another harsh sigh. “A drowning victim today. I’d resuscitated him. Fred touched him. He died.”

Ven shot his eyebrows up. “Fred?”

Patrick shrugged. “Fred. I’m still not convinced she’s what you say she is. Come to think of it, I’m not convinced this isn’t still a dream.”

A tightness pulled at Ven’s unbeating heart. “Dream? What kind of dream?”

Patrick’s eyes closed and he pulled an irritated face. “Fuck. Not this again.”

“You’re still having those nightmares, aren’t you?”

With another, much more violent muttered curse, Patrick rose to his feet. “Leave it alone, Ven. I’ve had a gutful. Whatever it is you think I am, I’m not.”

Hot anger shot through Ven and he stood, glaring at his brother. “How many times have I saved you from dying, Patrick?”

“Jesus, not this again!”

“How many times did I save your life before my death? How many times did I pull you from the surf after a freak wave dumped you under? Wiped you out? How many times did I grab you from the road after you somehow stumbled off the curb into the pathway of a bus, or a truck? How many freak accidents have I saved you from, brother? How many? It seems to me I’ve kept you alive on more than one occasion when some force has been pulling as many strings as possible to see you dead.”

Patrick didn’t respond. Ven studied him, trying
not
to be angry. His brother had spent his life struggling with something inside him, something he didn’t want to acknowledge or release. But it was there. It wasn’t just his denied ability to see events in the future, nor the way he’d moved the television remote control without touching it. It was something Ven couldn’t explain. Like Patrick was important. More than important. On a level of existence he couldn’t understand or vocalize. He’d sensed it as a human, he’d felt it as vampire. Whatever Patrick was, he was more than he thought, more than he wanted and quite frankly, Ven had had enough of his refusal to see that. His kid brother needed to face it. Especially now that Death was interested in him. “Not to sound churlish, Pat, but I died protecting you. The vamp that attacked us outside the pub was not after me. It was after you. There’s gotta be a reason for that.”

“He was hungry. I was the weaker target. That’s all.”

Ven shook his head. “That’s bullshit, and you know it.”

Patrick shot him a silent look and Ven couldn’t miss the stubborn glint in his eyes, or the bunching tightness in his jaw. His shields were coming up. As they did every time Ven raised the issue.

Biting back an inhuman growl, he stormed across Patrick’s bedroom, heading for the door he’d so recently barged through. “Fuck this,” he threw over his shoulder as he crossed the threshold. “I want answers.”

And there was only one creature he knew who could provide them.

It was time to face Death. Again.

Chapter Three

Amy Elizabeth Mathieson lay stretched on her bed, gazing up at the ceiling. She ran her hands over her ribcage, down her waist, across her hips, noting with pride the toned muscles and complete absence of fat. She worked hard to stay in shape, spending hours in the gym, even more in Pilates and yoga classes every week. If she didn’t, who knows what vacuous bimbo with a vampire fetish may lure Ven away from her.