Dark Destiny (Dark Sentinel #1) - Lexxie Couper Page 0,64

a craggy cliff, it was impossible to get to by foot and known only by a handful of the most diehard surfers. So small it had never been charted on any map that Ven knew of, nor named by any town planner. He’d surfed here with Patrick most days when alive. He surfed here most nights since dying.

A gentle offshore breeze blew against his face and he closed his eyes, letting its cool caress calm him.

The beach. Almost his second home. Peaceful. A place where he knew what he was at heart: a simple Aussie guy who loved to surf.

Taking the comforting smell of the beach into his body, he opened his eyes, scanning the narrow strip and the waves beyond for signs of human life.

None. He had the beach all to himself.

“Thank fucking God.”

Watching a perfect set of waves crash over the beach’s shallow coral reef, Ven let himself smile. He felt more relaxed already, less an evil fiend.

Better. He felt better.

Another breeze, this one a little stronger, a little colder, gusted past him and a surprised chuckle bubbled past his lips and he looked down at himself. Well fuck, he was naked. Where the hell were his jeans?

Spotting them crumpled on the ground amongst dry leaves and twigs a few steps away, he walked over and grabbed them up. The urge to cast them aside, to run down the sand and plunge head first into the breaking waves as naked as the day he was born rolled over him. He looked at the surf, lifted his gaze to the midday sun and back to the surf again. It was tempting. To submerge himself in the water…to submerge himself in a life he once thought lost to him forever.

The waves had no memory. They cast no judgment.

He took one step forward.

Go on. Do it. Let the surf scour away the guilt and contempt still churning in your gut. You know you’ll feel better. Almost human, in fact.

Stinging disdain smacked into him, a merciless slap of reality. He scrunched up his face, yanking his jeans up his legs and over his arse. He wasn’t human, no matter how much he longed to be so. What he’d just done to Amy in her living room, what he’d just been about to do to Amy proved that all too well. A quick skinny-dip in the ocean wasn’t going to change the fact he was a vile, malevolent creature.

What he had to do now was prove to himself he wasn’t the monster lurking in his veins.

“You’re one fucked up vampire, Steven Watkins,” he muttered, dropping to his arse on the sand.

Resting his elbows on his knees, he watched the waves build and break, build and break in a lulling, perpetual rhythm. The sun peeked at him through the branches of the old eucalyptus, painting him in a dappling pattern, and he closed his eyes again, breathing in the perfection of the moment.

This was heaven. This was where—when the time came and some little Buffy-wannabe staked him in the heart—he wanted to spend eternity. If he tried hard enough he could almost believe the insidious, powerful hunger devouring him from within was just a case of the midday munch—

A twig snapped behind him.

In a blur of shifting muscles, he was on his feet, his stare locking on the hideous creature standing under the trees before him.

His throat slammed shut and his fists bunched. “What the bloody hell are you?”

“He is a q’thulu”, a disembodied voice said.

“Fuck.” Ven started, swinging around.

A man stood on his right. A skinny man in a black suit with sallow flesh and lank, greasy hair.

“Who the fuck are you?”

The man smiled at him, revealing rotting yellow teeth. “He is a touch grumpy,” he continued, lips barely moving. “I had to bend many rules to rouse him from his slumber, so I do not think this will be pleasant for you.”

Ven blinked. Every molecule in his body churned. His stomach, sick from starvation, rolled. His demon screeched and without thought or hesitation, he released control of his demon, letting the very thing he’d fled from mere minutes ago rear to the surface again.

Whoever the man in the suit was, Ven didn’t like him. Not at all.

“I must say, I have never been able to locate you, Steven Watkins. Until today, that is. It is surprising to find you standing in the sun.” The man pursed his lips, a contemplative expression flashing across his face before he smiled. “I would stay to