Page 118 of Lunar Diamonds
“I’m good,” Isaac said.
“Leave this beach now!” Aaron roared at the bald guy, cocking his gun.
“In Kane’s name!” The bald man laughed and cut his own throat with the blade. I gasped, losing my balance as his blood gushed like a fountain.
Drake steadied me. “Easy there.”
“What the fuck?” Isaac rasped.
The shadow witch fell to the sand, twitching to stillness, blood pooling beneath him.
“For Kane!” the others called, praising the name of their magic’s creator.
A mass suicide played out before us, the chorus of gargling death and sprays of crimson sickening.
The energy of the moon kept my nausea at bay, cooling the threat of a roiling stomach.
“We need to leave,” Alice said.
The fire turned red, growing, growing, growing. A human on a spike screamed, awake now, struggling to break free.
“Help me!” she cried.
“Come on!” Isaac called, darting in her direction.
I followed him, wary of the expansion of the flames. We needed to be quick here.
A mighty explosion of heat and incredible force threw me back. I spun through the air, hitting the sand with a bounce. I yelped and rolled until I slammed into rock.
Dammit!
I sat up, dizzy now, wiping sand from my face. “Isaac?”
A blood-curdling roar answered me.
Chapter 34
RILEY
Ears ringing, I jumped to my feet.
“What the fuck?” Isaac said, straightening beside me.
A beast ten-feet tall stood before us. Made of red fire, shaped like a bear, with just one large black lidless eye in its head. It blinked, opening a mouth filled with obsidian fangs.
It roared, stomping its feet. The beach trembled and my bladder tightened.
Crap.
The heat coming from its body set me to sweating.
Isaac took my hand, squeezing with reassurance.
There were bodies on the ground. Charred and fallen from the wooden spikes. The air stank of burning flesh.
I swallowed an acidic bubble. Those poor people.
The siblings fired their guns at the creature, the bullets swallowed by the fire.
