Dark Destiny (Dark Sentinel #1) - Lexxie Couper Page 0,42
him. He stared at his brother. Stared hard. “Don’t fall for her, Patrick. Don’t. She’s not what you think she is.”
Patrick’s laugh was short. Harsh. Humorless. “I am getting sick of hearing that. I’m not what I think I am. Fred’s not what I think she is. Shit, even you’re not what I thought you were.”
Hot irritation made Ven clench his fists. His demon growled again, stronger, closer to the surface. “You asked me on the beach how Death had been keeping me occupied? Maybe the question you should have asked is why she was keeping me occupied?” He looked at his brother, wanting to shake him. Wanting him to wake up and smell the proverbial goddamn coffee. “While you were being attacked by a demon, good ol’ Fred was doing her damndest to keep me away from you.”
A light Ven had never seen before flared in Patrick’s eyes, and for a split moment fear sliced through him and he flinched, sure his brother was going to hit him.
But Patrick didn’t. He turned away, back to the window and the strengthening day. “And her damndest was sticking her tongue down your throat? Did you put up much of a fight?”
Ven flinched again. Both at Patrick’s icy words and the knowledge behind them.
“I smelt her on you, Ven.”
Ven didn’t miss the resentment in Patrick’s voice. Or the jealousy. Fuck, things were worse than he thought and he had no idea how to fix it. Save remove Death from the picture.
But you don’t want to do that either, do you, Steven? You don’t trust her. You don’t believe her, but that doesn’t stop you wanting her. Wanting her on every goddamn level and then some.
“Don’t fall for her, Pat,” he repeated, gut churning, chest tight, not knowing what else to say. “Please.”
“I’m sick of it, Steven,” Patrick said in reply, and Ven could tell by the closed resonance in his voice that Patrick had shut him out. “I’ve had enough of you inhuman lot today to last me a lifetime.”
Cold grief stabbed into Ven, but from his brother’s dismissal or his own simmering jealousy, he could not tell.
And at that very moment in time, he pretty much didn’t care.
“I love you, Pat,” he said, giving his brother’s profile a level stare. “But you’re being a right fucking wanker.”
His demon roared, feeding on the dark emotion behind the insult, surging to the surface. He snatched back control—just—before turning from Patrick. He crossed the living room, stopping briefly at the hallway door. “I’m outta here. I’ve spent the last eighteen years living in the shadows for you. Until you’re ready to acknowledge what’s in those shadows, I’m going to live in the sun.” He turned and walked down the hallway to the front door, yanking it open with such force he heard the nails fixing it to the doorjamb tear from the wood.
He didn’t care about that either.
He stepped through the door, out into the sunlight. He was hungry.
He needed to feed.
It was time to visit Amy.
Before his demon took over and he fed from the only other living blood source near him.
Patrick.
Pestilence sat on his throne, furious. He drummed his fingernails against the gnarled humerus bone fashioned into an armrest. Things were not going to plan. Not at all.
Death was sniffing about where she did not belong. She’d flexed her Rider muscle and rubbed his nose in it. The cursed nikor had failed to drown the lifeguard. The human had not only escaped its clutches, but decimated it as well. How in the name of all the Deities did a human escape a third-order demon?
He drummed his nails harder against the bone, feeling it splinter a little with each strike. How had it gone so wrong?
According to the last Fate, everything should be different now. Death should have been a sick, diseased shell of her former self, groveling at his feet for his mercy and the lifeguard should be dead, and yet nothing had changed. Nothing! How the aqueous demon had let the lifeguard slip away from him, he still couldn’t fathom. The stupid, pathetic thing had let the mortal kill it! Kill it, of all things.
Incredulous rage ripped through him, turning the saliva in his mouth to sour bile. He curled his nose and spat, the wad of phlegm sizzling and hissing on the cold marble floor like fat on molten steel. He watched the spittle eat into the black rock until there was nothing but a small hole in the floor.