Dark Destiny (Dark Sentinel #1) - Lexxie Couper Page 0,4

at the sight of two—albeit unfocussed—brown eyes squinting up at him.

“Wh…wh…what happened?”

The man’s voice was barely more than a rasp, but to Patrick it sounded like a pure song. He grinned. “You tried to drink half the ocean, mate.”

The man coughed, a scratchy, wheezy hiccup. “That…was a bit…stupid…of me.” Closing his eyes, he pulled a ragged breath, another cough choking the shaky intake before he could finish.

“Take it easy, mate,” Patrick cautioned, pressing his fingers to the man’s neck again. His pulse was weak but steady. “The paramedics are on the way. Where’s your stuff? Towel, car keys, clothes—”

“No, no.” The man shook his head, struggling to sit up. His brown eyes flicked around the crowd, almost nervous. “No ambulance. I’m okay.”

Bluey squatted down beside Patrick and placed his hand firmly on the man’s chest. “Mate, you were dead. Wato here brought you back to life. You need to go to the hospital.”

“No. I’m fine. I’m—”

Another coughing fit claimed the man and he dropped backward, lying flat.

“The ambos are here,” Grub murmured, popping his head over Patrick’s shoulder to nod at the approaching paramedics running across the sand.

Fingers still pressed to the man’s strengthening pulse, Patrick shot the paramedics a quick look. Relief coursed through him. Thank bloody God. Maybe they could talk some sense into the—

A woman leant over his shoulder, slim and dressed in snug blue jeans, a New York Yankees baseball cap shrouding her face in shadows. A chill rippled up his spine and his palms prickled, as if he’d suddenly plunged them into a wasp nest. He felt her gaze skim over his face from behind large, black sunglasses before she extended her arm with absolute confidence and stroked long, slender fingers over the man’s fleshy chest.

Absolute terror flooded the man’s face, turning his sunburnt skin a sick vomit-orange. His brown eyes bulged. He stared up at the woman, soundless words bubbling from his mouth. His pulse rate tripled. Quadrupled.

And stopped.

Dead.

“What the?” Patrick frowned, ramming his fingers harder to the man’s neck.

Nothing.

He jolted to his feet, turning to glare at the woman in the baseball cap.

But she wasn’t there. In fact, there wasn’t a sign of her on the beach at all.

As if she’d never been there in the first place.

Gut twisting, palm itching, Patrick’s frown deepened. Where was she? What the hell was going on?

Death walked away from the lifeguard, the stiletto heels of her boots not even remotely sinking into the soft white sand. The coastal breeze caressed her face and arms and she pulled in a long breath, enjoying its heat even as the blazing midday sun sucked the moisture from the flesh of the humans—oblivious to her existence—around her. Summer in Australia. Hot. Hotter. Hottest. Good thing she’d ditched her normal Grim Reaper’s attire. Too damn stifling.

Adjusting her sunglasses on her face, she sidestepped a teenage couple making out on a beach towel, casting them a detached yet curious look. He would live for another sixty-five years before dying in a car accident, she would die in five years of advanced skin cancer.

Death, or as she preferred to call herself in this millennium, Fred—after a particularly cute Basset hound she once met—tsked, noting the gleaming oil smeared over the girl’s bare flesh and the distinct scent of coconut heavy on the air. As if humans didn’t have enough to deal with in their short time, they had to go and seek out death any chance they could, all in the name of beauty.

Shaking her head, she followed the waterline away from the commotion still unfolding behind her. The paramedics would not revive the drowned man, no matter how skilled or tenacious they were. All she’d left them was an empty skin-wrapped lump of meat and bones.

The icy tingle in the pit of her belly she experienced after every claiming whispered through her, feeding her magic. It nourished her power, sating the Rider within. Today however, it also felt…wrong. Not because the soul she’d removed from the mortal coil—Richard Michael Peabody—was a closet pedophile who deserved to die. That very morning he’d raped—for the tenth time—his six-year-old niece while his twin sister attended a doctor’s appointment.

Fred felt no remorse for Peabody. The human male deserved to have his life extinguished. He most definitely deserved the eternal damnation awaiting him. When it came to mortal monsters like Peabody, she enjoyed her job. But today, even with the tingle in her core and the sure knowledge of just punishment about to be meted out, she