Dark Destiny (Principatus) (3 page)

Every soul she claimed, every life thread she severed she did with pride. Her purpose was ultimate. Life could not exist without Death. If she didn’t do what she did, humanity would pay the price. That didn’t mean however, that she was emotionless. She felt no pity for Peabody, really, who would? But she couldn’t help feel sorry for the lifeguard who’d tried so hard to save him.

She’d seen many EMOs at work, but none were as aggressively determined to thwart her work as the lifeguard. It was as though the very idea of losing Peabody assaulted him. Wounded him. Raw energy had poured from him in intoxicating waves as he’d fought to save the vile man’s life, almost as powerful and energizing as the sun above.

Uninvited, an image of the lifeguard filled Fred’s head and she pulled in a soft, appreciative breath. Now
there
was a tenacious son of a bitch. Not just tenacious, but damn fine to look at as well. Tall, lean and sinewy with smooth skin kissed bronze by the sun and shaggy blonde hair bleached golden by its solar rays. His eyes were a fierce, piercing green, his nose strong and hawkish, his lips totally kissable even when clenched together in stubborn denial.

A soft beat pulsed between Fred’s thighs and she took another swift breath, surprised at the reaction. It had been a long time since she’d been aroused by a mortal. The last—an arrogant but brilliant Roman general with a nose just like her lifeguard and a succinct way with words—had dumped her for a snooty Egyptian queen with an asp fetish.

She turned her mind back to the Australian, remembering the way he looked as he ran from the sea with water streaming over his lean, muscular body, the sun highlighting broad, strong shoulders, snug blue swimming shorts hugging narrow hips. It was a good memory. A potent memory.

The heat between Fred’s thighs pulsed again and, despite the warm breezes blowing across the ocean, her nipples pinched into tight peaks. Something about the lifeguard intrigued her. Not just his fierce battle to deny her, but something else. Something different.

She strode along the sand, a detached, professional part of her mind marking those around her for their time, and thought of Peabody’s failed rescue. Like the lifeguard, something about it had felt…what? Wrong? No, wrong wasn’t the correct word, especially to describe the lifeguard. Yummy. That was a good word to describe the lean Australian with the messy blonde hair. Sexy as sin another one. Well, another three, actually. Unusual however,
was
the word she was looking for to describe his rescue attempt.

But why?

What was it about the sequence of events?

The lifeguard works on the drowning man’s body, pounding against the man’s fleshy chest with his palms, the sun turning his smooth muscular back to a bronzed sheen. The subtle heat of the day kisses her arms and neck and cheeks as she watches him battle the inevitable. The sound of the pedophile’s perverted, weakening heartbeat vibrates through her core, feeding the familiar tingle in her gut as she prepares to sever his life thread… She leans over the lifeguard to touch Peabody and the salty bite of the lifeguard’s sweat threads into her being like mist. She turns her head, for some reason wanting to see his eyes, wanting see if they burn with the same fierce determination she feels radiating from him. She looks at him…and he looks at her, his soft breath fanning her face.

Fred froze, the sounds of the beach—seagulls screeching, swimmers splashing, people laughing—sucked away by stunned shock.

He
looked at
her
.

He could see her.

That’s impossible, Fred. The living can’t see you until the very moment you claim them. Not unless you choose for them to do so and you sure as hell didn’t choose for this guy to see you today.

But he
had
seen her. He’d looked straight at her, and it was only now, with the post- claiming buzz fading to a soft tingle, that she realized it. He’d seen her.

How in all the levels of hell could he see you?

No, he couldn’t. The living
didn’t
see her. She prevented it. The Powers prevented it.

Wishful thinking? Maybe your starved libido is making you see things?

Before she could stop herself, she turned and gave the lifeguard a long, hard inspection from across the sand.

He sat beside Peabody’s inert body, head buried in his hands, broad shoulders slumped. She’d seen this very pose before. The position of a defeated human. But unlike others in this situation, anger radiated from the man. Anger. Not misery, or self-centered contemplation. Anger. Simmering, tangible anger.

Fred cocked an eyebrow, her sex squeezing in base appreciation.
Who
are
you, Mr. Tall, Bronzed and Brooding?

Stare locked on the increasingly intriguing man, she tapped into the List of the Living threaded into her very existence, seeking the answer.

But all that surfaced from the never-ending database was a name and date of birth. Patrick Anthony Watkins. Born February 29
^th
1972.

Fred frowned. “That can’t be right. Where’s his date of death?”

From the moment of conception, the time and cause of death of every living creature with a soul was predetermined. The Order of Actuality demanded it. From the smallest baby to the leader of the free world, their lifespan was locked in a fixed time frame, imprinted on their very genetic fiber.

All, it seemed, except Patrick Watkins. Which made him a…

Fred narrowed her eyes, regarding him across the busy beach. The sun beat down on those around her, drawing moisture from their pores, turning the heavily populated strip of sand to a wavering shimmer of silver light and color, yet Patrick Watkins remained sharp in clarity. Just Patrick. Filling her vision and her core.

She studied him closely and then shook her head. Well, whatever he was he wasn’t a demon. He possessed a soul. She could feel its pure, spiritual presence pouring from him, even from this distance. A blazing white essence of life and humanity so strong it made her blood sing and her skin tingle. Frowning, she tilted her head to the side, looking at him through the darkness of her sunglasses. It didn’t make sense. If he had a soul, he should have a date of death. So why was she drawing a complete blank?

And why, in the name of the Powers, was she so damned turned on? Did the man’s ambiguity have anything to do with it? Or was it just because he was smolderingly sexy?

Fred shook her head again. She needed answers. And another
closer
look.

Because you want answers, or because you want to check him out again?

The unbidden and way-too-close-to-the-bone thought made her sex constrict in a firm, warm pulse of eager anticipation. She couldn’t touch him, but she could look. She could look a lot. She could take her visual fill of him because the living
could not
see her. No matter what her foolish mind insisted it saw.

A tense pressure welled in her chest and, turning away from the sight of Patrick kneeling beside the empty pedophile’s body, she released a long, dragged out sigh.

It was a sad fact of her existence she could no longer ignore. She, Death, the Grim Reaper,
El Muerte
, Cronus, Azreal, the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, had become a Peeping freakin’ Tom.

Gritting her teeth, Fred stormed along the high-tide line, fighting like hell to ignore the damp tightness between her thighs. “Fantastic. Fucking fantastic.”

One hundred tall, thick candles materialized into spontaneous existence, illuminating the dark, cavernous room with a cold, flickering light. It washed the black stone walls pale yellow, throwing writhing shadows against the hard surface and casting a weak glow over the slim man in a black business suit where he stood before a massive, bone-framed mirror.

He studied the room—
his
room—in the reflection of the glass. It suited him. A room worthy of the First Horseman. An entity of the Highest Order could create whatever personal environment they desired within the Realm and his space was
exactly
how he desired it to be. A room of sick death and sick life. A room symbolizing his stature and premier position.

In the centre stood his bed, constructed by over a thousand human bones once white and raw, now blackened by eons of waxy smoke. He had taken many a sacrificial virgin’s purity on that bed, all whimpering at his power and inescapable strength. He had taken more than one demon slut as well. She-demons who knew who he was, knew, unlike his disrespectful colleagues, how important he was. She-demons who recognized his potential and wanted to taste his seed and bear his spawn.

He let his gaze slide from the bed to the towering throne standing on a raised dais under a large hanging candelabra. His prick grew stiff at the sight. Both throne and candelabra where made from human bones, just as the bed, but unlike the bed and candelabra, the bones of the throne were stark white. Each humerus, femur, tibia and skull still ripe with living marrow and tissue. The throne was older than time, but he made certain it defied time as well. It didn’t take much to infuse each bone in its construction with an incantation to preserve its rawness. To touch each one was to touch a bone freshly torn from a living being’s body, still slick and sticky with blood and fluid, still thrumming with that on which he fed the most—dying life. Whenever he sat on the throne, which he did often, the pain of the personally selected humans whose lives were forfeited for its creation seeped into his being, making him stronger.

Whenever he fucked on the throne, his seed destroyed the female impaled on his shaft and his orgasm decimated an entire region on the surface of man’s world, striking every living creature down with disease, swarms of insects destroying all plant life and crops. Whenever he fucked on the throne it was as though he and he alone wielded the force of the Apocalypse itself.

The Powers had commanded he cease such activities, ordering him to tow the line. He was growing impatient with them. He was growing impatient with them and their timeline and their preordained hierarchy. Who were they to decide what
he
did and when he did it? Did they forget who he was? What he would bring about?

Returning his stare to the mirror, he studied his reflection, pursing his lips as he did so. He was short for an entity, he knew that. Short and thin, without the typical ostentatious tail and horns and over-developed muscles so favored by other first-order entities. No one would ever accuse him of using steroids, that was for certain. His blue eyes were pale and watery, his dark hair lank, his flesh pale and dull. “Sallow” was a word he’d heard muttered often by his brethren to describe him. “Sickly” and “weedy” two more adjectives used loudly and without secrecy by one of his number in particular.

His eyes narrowed as he let his thoughts turn to the last Horseman. Death. He drew her image into his mind, remembering all too easily her condescending rebuke of the proposal he’d suggested. A partnership of greatness. Not just a sexual one, but one to undo the very Fabric, to destroy the Order of Actuality completely. A magnificent, malevolent duo to bring about the very end of existence. A
duo
, not a quartet. Two Riders, not four.

She’d laughed. At both his sexual advances and his proposition. Laughed at him and told him to grow up and get a life. “Seriously, you don’t still believe in that old wives’ tale, do you? Do you see my black horse anywhere? Or my pale one, for that matter? Do you see me strutting around in a pair of chaps getting ready for the big assault?”

Curling his fingers into fists, he thought of Death and the Powers and how
all
would suffer from his wrath.

“I am Pestilence,” he murmured, smoothing his left palm over his hair as he stared at his reflection in the giant mirror. The flames of the candles flared brighter at the sound of his name and the organ between his thighs grew stiff with dark anticipation. “I am the First Horseman of the Apocalypse. The one who brings disease and suffering incarnate. The one who destroys the world of man’s crops and stock, their weak and young and feeble.
I
am the one who will bring the end, the one who will bask in the glory of the Apocalypse. Me and me alone.” He gazed at his reflected form, cock hard, blood thick and fast in his veins. “And
nothing
or no one can stop me.”

His reflection stared back at him, human façade just the way he wanted it to be. Deceptive. Misleading. “No one,” he repeated, hot impatience eating at him, cold confidence feeding its hunger. “Not even him.”

His reflection stared back at him.

And, with barely a shimmer, turned into that of the lifeguard’s.

Chapter Two

Patrick threw his keys on the sideboard and swung the door closed behind him. What a day.

He dragged his hands through his hair, pushing the image of the dead man—Richard Peabody—from his mind. As with all drownings on Bondi Beach, the police had grilled him and his team for two hours after the failed resuscitation. Before that, the inevitable and always heart-wrenching conversation with the victim’s loved one had occurred—in Peabody’s case, a sister whom arrived at the beach just as the paramedics were loading his still-warm body into the ambulance.

He’d finished the day counseling his team who, like himself, took losing a swimmer hard, before jogging home, the tragedy replaying in his mind over and over again in a vivid, inescapable loop. And every time he experienced it again he saw the woman in the New York Yankees baseball cap with the concealing black sunglasses and leg-hugging jeans.