his teeth, another surge of disgust roaring through him. Here he was, caught up in the middle of the coming Apocalypse brought about by some wanker with a grudge, and he was getting jealous? Jesus, he needed to get his act together.
“Gentlemen.” Fred’s voice jerked him from his self-contempt and he looked at her, noticing her eyes were once again their original glacier blue. “Welcome to the Realm.”
“Great,” Ven growled. “Bloody fantastic. Just where I wanted to be. Who does your decorating?”
The surly venom in his brother’s snarl made Patrick blink. He turned, finding Ven had dropped into one of two leather armchairs positioned before an open fireplace, arms crossed, human once again.
Armchairs? Fireplace? He frowned and let his attention finally move to his surroundings.
The room was small, almost cosy, with polished wooden lamp tables on which sat squat, bronze lamps. Floor-to-ceiling shelves on three of the walls, stuffed full with books of all sizes and thickness, and a massive open fireplace made from what looked like black granite dominated the wall before him. A fire blazed in its guts, the flames licking the air in undisturbed tongues of heat, casting a warm yellow glow over the room and its comfortable pieces of furniture—and the silently snarling vampire hulking in one of said pieces.
“What’s the point of bringing us here, Death?” Ven thumped his heels onto the low table sitting in front of the two armchairs, his expression grumpy. “Not satisfied with doing my brother in the real world anymore?”
“The real world?” Patrick turned his stare from his brother to Fred. “The Realm? Where are we?”
“The place between the void and the final destination,” Ven answered, studying his feet—which Patrick realized, were bare. “The home of the Order.”
He frowned. “Of Actuality?”
Ven shook his head. “The Order of the Agents.”
“How do you know that, Steven?” Fred asked.
He looked at her, the tension in her voice unsettling him. She stared at Ven, her eyes alight with that same intensity he’d seen before she’d done whatever it was she did to bring them all here. An intense light that said she had discovered something terrible. Or incredible. “Tell me how long you’ve known about the Realm, Steven. And the Order of the Agents.”
Patrick turned back to his brother.
Ven shrugged, but the firm set in his jaw and the stubborn look in his eye, a look Patrick had seen more than once, told him the shrug was a lie. “What’s going on, Steven?” he asked. “The Agents of what?”
“Something has happened to your brother, Patrick. Something…” Fred stopped, and again that incredulous expression flashed across her face.
Ven snapped to his feet, fixing her with a hard stare. “What has happened to me, Death? What? Come on, you know all the answers. How come I do now know all this shit about the Agents of the Order, and the Deities and the Realm and the Void now? One minute the sum total knowledge I have in my head is what I learnt growing up, the next, after my run in with the bloke in the black suit and his squid-faced friend, I’m a walking, talking encyclo-bloody-pedia on all things fucked-up and inhuman. How come I now know exactly what a seraph is? What a cherub is? Who Abaddon is and why it’s best not to let him catch you unawares? Tell me that. Tell me what’s going on and I’ll—”
Fred cut him short. “I need to test my theory.”
Ven’s eyebrows knotted for a brief moment and then his jaw clenched. “And how do you do that, exactly?”
Fred’s tongue darted out to wet her lips, a hesitant, almost nervous action that made Patrick’s throat squeeze tight. Why did he get a bad feeling about this?
“Your blood. I need to taste your blood.”
Ven vamped out.
Instantly. Completely.
He hissed, his fingers—longer than normal and tipped with thick claws—wrapped around Fred’s throat and he jerked her from the floor.
“Steven!” Patrick shouted, lunging at his brother.
“No one is tasting my blood,” Ven growled, his eyes burning with a wild yellow light.
“It won’t—” Fred began, but Ven threw her across the small room before she could finish.
She arced through the space. And the space shifted.
The room shimmered and before Fred hit the wall, the wall wasn’t there.
She twisted midair and landed feet first on the floor, her face set as she strode back toward him, the room reforming around her with each step she took. “The other choice is I kill your brother,” she stated, matter-of-fact.
It felt like he’d been punched in