Dark Destiny (Dark Sentinel #1) - Lexxie Couper Page 0,31

for a fool.

He glared at the pedestrians before lifting his head to the sky. Shit. It was almost day break. He needed to get home, no matter how hungry he was, no matter how horny he was, before he became a charred hunk of ash.

He began to draw an image of his home high on the Bondi Beach hills into his mind when a voice almost tore his head apart.

Fuck! Patrick’s voice screamed. It’s trying to tear me in two!

5

The creature swung its massive head, staring at Patrick with sunken, pupil-less eyes. Its maw stretched wide, revealing jagged teeth formed by tiny grains of sand, glistening with moisture in the rising sun’s faint light.

They might be made of sand, Patrick, but they look more than capable of tearing into your flesh.

He ran straight at it, regardless. Didn’t halt his sprint. Whatever it was, it wasn’t fully formed yet and that meant it was vulnerable. He hoped.

And if it’s not?

“Too fucking bad.” He smashed into it, driving his shoulder into its gut. Millions of grains of sand bit into him in a million pinpricks of scalding heat and he let out a loud roar. He heard a wild squeal shatter the quiet of the beach, felt the scream of furious pain deep in his soul. Before his mind could register the unreal fact his shoulder was sinking into a writhing, animated mass of burning sand grains, he burst through it, like a desperate man barging through a living dust storm.

He stumbled to a halt on the other side, spinning about to stare at the creature, disbelief and dismay making his gut churn.

It was reforming. Bigger. Wider. Almost half the size of the patrol tower, blocking out the sun’s infant rays, shrouding him in its cold shadow. Its head swiveled toward him, sightless eyes drilling into him with terrifying intent, its mouth stretching wide to reveal teeth more jagged and pointed than before.

Patrick swallowed. “Oh, fuck.”

The creature lunged at him, a hideous pillar of living sand and sea, its arm slamming into his chest and hip, driving him backward.

His heel dropped into a hollow in the beach, and he stumbled backward, arms flailing in an attempt to keep his balance. If he fell now he was fucked. There was no way he could beat this thing on his back.

The creature roared, the deafening screech of triumph punching at Patrick’s ears. Yet even as he fought franticly with his traitorous feet, even as he grabbed at the thing’s arms, he knew the sound was only in his head.

Claws of sand tore at his chest, his hip, ripping into his flesh. The creature lowered its face to his, sand blasting his cheeks and forehead as it screeched again. It sank its talons deeper into his body and began to pull.

Fuck! It’s trying to tear me in two!

A surge of raw fury ripped through him. He glared up into the face of the sand monster, into the sunken pits of its eyes. “Fuck you, you bastard,” he growled, curling his fingers into its dense, writhing arms. “The beach is closed.”

An image filled his head—the creature blasting into a billion grains of sand, each one scattering through the air on a furious gust of wind. He drew on the power of that image, let it fill his entire being the way he let the feel of the surf fill him when he searched for a missing swimmer.

Cold calm flooded through him. Turned his fury to icy resolve.

He stared at the sand creature, pictured his fist stabbing into its mammoth chest, saw it exploding into a feeble, pathetic puff of individual sand grains. Saw each and every one of those grains scatter to the winds.

And lashed out with his mind.

A piercing wail burst from the thing’s mouth. It reeled back, arms flailing, mouth gaping in obvious pain. A violent shudder wracked through its impossible body before, in the space of a heartbeat, it shattered, each grain of its formation whipping away on a sudden coastal gust.

Gone. Just like that.

Patrick dropped to his knees, sucking in deep, ragged breaths. Trickles of blood painted crimson lines over his skin, blending with his sweat. He stared at the ground, struggling to process it all. Jesus, had that really happened? Had he really just fought a friggin’ sand monster?

“How the hell did you do that?”

The shocked male voice snapped Patrick’s head up. Throat tight, blood roaring, he gazed at his brother standing on the sand beside the patrol tower. Directly in