Dark Destiny (Dark Sentinel #1) - Lexxie Couper Page 0,35

could escape the grasp of Death, no matter who or what they were. No one.

And yet, Patrick Watkins just had.

Beyond frustrated, she huffed into her fringe. Answers. She needed freaking answers, and standing here, gaping after two annoying, irritating, stubborn and—unfortunately—sexy-assed brothers wasn’t getting them.

With a sharp sigh, she dragged her fingers through her hair and transubstantiated into the Realm’s library.

The room, one of many all the first-order entities and sub-deities could access at will, glowed with warm light. The squat table lamps positioned on either side of two large leather armchairs illuminated the wall-to-wall bookshelves and open fireplace.

She dropped into one of the chairs and kicked off her boots. A small trickle of sand spilled from each one onto the rug beneath her feet and a wry smile pulled at her lips. Even in the Realm she couldn’t escape the Australian lifeguard.

Escape him? Hah. Admit it, that’s the last thing on your mind when it comes to Patrick Watkins.

An unexpected image of Patrick filled her mind—wet from the surf, muscles coiled and pumped with blood—and the lower pit of her stomach tightened. Damn it, she needed to focus on the situation, not how sexy he looked. How was she to discover what was going on if she kept drooling over him?

Without invitation, Ven joined Patrick in her head as well, sardonic expression locked on her, pointed fangs making her palms prickle and her tailbone itch.

She dropped her head into her hands and groaned. She was in trouble. Big trouble and it was all the damn Watkins brothers’ fault.

How dare they be so damn sexy and mysterious and…and…

Grinding her teeth, refusing to acknowledge just how irrational and childish that last thought was, she conjured the first book from the top shelf and opened it.

If she was correct, Pestilence wanted Patrick Watkins out of the picture for some reason, but why? What did he know about the Australian lifeguard she didn’t? Hopefully the answer could be found in one of the books in this room.

Scanning the pages of The First Horseman and the Case for Human Eradication, a heavy, pompous and ancient tome she’d never once imagined she’d ever open let alone read, she curled her lip. Nothing. Its author—a second-order seraphim—had been infatuated with Pestilence’s power over mankind’s health, livestock, and crops, and had spent far too many pages babbling on about why humans should be made to suffer. Apart from clichéd ideas and tired rhetoric however, it offered nothing. No mention of Patrick, Steven, a vampire who could withstand daylight, hell, not even a passing reference to Australia or the beach.

She pulled another book down from the shelf, this one with the delightfully antiquated title, How the Horsemen Shall Punish Man. Honestly, why half the Realm’s population of sub-order entities hadn’t realized the idea of the Apocalypse had been benched eons ago was beyond her.

She skimmed through the ridiculous book, finding nothing but an overuse of words like annihilation and obliterate, before discarding it with a growl.

Forty-one books of the same theme and style later and she wanted to scream. No mention of Patrick or Steven Watkins in any of them. Forty-one books and all she had to show for it was a headache, a growing detestation for the word “thou”, and an insane urge to round up the authors and give them all a damn good beating. Seriously, were there no decent writers in the Realm?

Running her fingers through her hair, she pulled another book from the shelf and read its title. Of Men and Demon. Catchy.

She flicked through its pages, made—she noticed with a curl of her nose—from cured human flesh, scanning each one for anything of importance. “Serious waste of my time,” she mumbled, turning a page. “Serious waste of my—”

The brother who cannot walk in the sun shall cast a shadow on the shifting grains of glass, and the shadow shall be of blood.

Her heart smashed against her breastbone and she read the sentence again.

The brother who cannot walk in the sun shall cast a shadow on the shifting grains of glass, and the shadow shall be of blood.

The brother who cannot walk in the sun shall cast a shadow? Surely that had to be a reference to Ven, the only vampire she knew of who could withstand sunlight? But on the shifting grains of glass? Grains of glass? She gave the book’s cover another look, noting the author.

The last Fate.

Cautious excitement tingled in her veins. She knew of the last Fate. Maybe the old