Page 132 of Lunar Diamonds
I paused halfway up the stairs close to Erin’s room.
“What’s wrong?” Drake asked.
“I don’t… I don’t know.” I hurried to the top of the stairs, looking down the hallway. A shiver licked up my spine, icyunease running across my arms. I rubbed at them. “Let’s keep going.”
Erin’s room sat at the end of the hallway.
What was wrong with me? What was the reason for the lump of cold heaviness in the pit of my stomach? Nothing could cross the protection spell around the mansion.
It must be the aftershocks of the night kicking in harder. Yeah, that had to be it.
Erin’s door opened. April lumbered into the hallway, holding her stomach. She fell into the wall, sliding down it, blood seeping through her fingers.
“By Hecate!” I cried, rushing over.
Drake got there first. “Easy there.”
My internal warnings had been right. The unease became all-out fear. “What happened?”
“It’s…. You have to…” She groaned, gritting her teeth.
“It’s alright,” Drake soothed.
“Where are the others?” I asked, braced for attack.
“They’re…” She looked behind me, her eyes widening. “Erin…”
I turned, coming face-to-face with the woman in question. But her face wasn’t hers, melting away like paper in the rain, a magical mask lifting.
Her face hadn’t been right earlier, but now…
The last of Erin melted away, an emaciated man’s face in her place.
What the hell?
Her body elongated, thinning, tufts of straggly gray hair sprouting from a badly scarred head. The shreds of Erin’s clothes littered the floor, replaced by blue jeans and a black shirt hanging from the rakish man.
Blue eyes blinked back at me, as bright as mine.
Oh. Crap.
Swirls of shadow magic laced with flickering silver danced around his fingers. “Hello, nephew.”
“I—”
“Blackout!”
Jonathon Aurora clapped his hands, and I blacked out.
Chapter 41
DRAKE
Riley collapsed into a heap at the man’s feet.
I went to help him, but Jonathon Aurora pulled a gun. “I wouldn’t.”
I lifted my hands, preparing an attack. “What do you want?”
