Bluey had murmured, searching for Ricky’s pulse. He’d run his hands and gaze over Ricky’s lifeless body, confusion etching his seasoned face. “The kid was just on the waves. He was just out there. Laughin’ with us. Whingein’ about goin’ to school today. He didn’t look sick. What happened?”
What happened?
That question had haunted Patrick ever since. Standing in his living room now, staring out the window at the relentless summer sun already beginning to bake the world outside, Patrick closed his eyes. The cold wind and the white sun was always the first thing he remembered about the event but it was his last words spoken to Bluey before calling the paramedics that haunted him the most.
“I don’t know.”
The denial still tasted like poison on his tongue. Three years later and he could still feel the numb guilt those words caused in his core.
I don’t know.
He did know, but he’d spent the last three years refusing to think about what that knowledge meant. He’d shut it out.
Patrick leant his forehead against the cool glass of the window. Until today, until the demon in the water and on the sand, he’d refused to “use” whatever abhorrent abilities lurked within him. Not since the confrontation with the shadowless man in the black suit that horrific winter’s morning three years ago.
Three years with no further contact from the strange man.
Three years without any overt, unnatural threats to his life.
He wanted to believe life was normal. He wanted to believe he was normal. Hell, even Ven had started to relax somewhat. As the days had passed since the event on the beach, Patrick all but convinced himself the surreal face-off with the man in the suit—the Disease—had been just another all-too-vivid nightmare. Reality cocooned him and he’d all but suppressed it.
Until now.
The appearance of Death, the unseen attacker in the surf, the sand creature on the beach, the arguments with Ven, the man in the suit appearing in his nightmares. Reality was unraveling around him once again, and once again, whatever…power…polluted his being had resurfaced and he could no longer fool himself.
He wasn’t normal. He’d never been normal.
“So, what are you, Patrick Watkins?” he muttered.
The Cure.
The ambivalent words whispered in his head and he pulled in a long, shaky breath. What the hell did that mean?
The cure to what? And if he was the cure, why did he feel so goddamn sick?
Thirty-six years of flashes of the future, knowing things before they happened, and for what purpose? Had it stopped his parents’ car inexplicably swerving off the road and wrapping around a telegraph pole?
No.
Thirty-six years of moving objects, not just the television remote, without touching them and to what end? Had it saved Ven from dying? From becoming a vampire?
No.
He sighed, the sound angry and desolate. “What in the name of all things holy am I the cure to?”
“I can tell you the answer to that,” a low, slightly husky female voice said behind him. “I think.”
He turned, his gaze falling immediately on Fred and his stomach clenched at the sight of her, his already unsteady heart kicking up a notch. She stood in the middle of his living room, soft black leather pants emphasizing her long, toned legs, a black Iron Man tank top hugging her torso. She studied him with those piercing eyes of hers, their glacier-blue depths apprehensive and bold at the same time. A searing twist of tension knotted in his gut, making his breath quicken and his body tighten.
What was it about her that made him feel like a hormone-crazy teenage boy?
It was more than a physical reaction. Every time he looked at her, came close to her, it was as if his body and his soul recognized her on a deeper level, the missing half of his existence he didn’t know was lost.
He shook his head and turned back to the window, gritting his teeth. After everything he’d been through today, after all the unnatural shit and the run-in with Ven, here he was getting horny and wistful at the mere sight of a creature that might or might not be planning to end his life. He was insane.
“What are you doing here, Death?” he asked, not turning to look at her. It was safer that way.
Really? Safer? Then why is your pulse pounding? Why are your palms itchy and your balls throbbing?
A soft sigh followed his question. “I figured if you wouldn’t come with me I would come back to you.”
“To do what? Kill me?”
Heavy silence filled