Page 133 of Lunar Diamonds
“What’s mine.” He shot me in the stomach, then blew out both my kneecaps.
Riley woke up screaming as I hit the floor, the pain a cocoon pinning me to the carpet. I couldn’t breathe, my vision swimming with a million colorful lights. Trapped, cooling with shock.
“Ri…” I tried speaking his name.
“Drake!” he cried. “Drake!”
Chapter 42
RILEY
The crack of the gun and a terrible pain dragged me from unconsciousness.
I screamed, quickly understanding what’d happened, that I’d felt those bullets myself. The white-hot pain muddled my reactions, weakening my body.
Drake’s pain is mine…
Crap!
“Drake!” I crawled over to him.
So much blood…
“You’ll be okay,” I said. “You have to be okay.”
“You’re awake already?” Uncle Jonathon complained in a scratchy voice. “Pity. We’ll do this the painful way.”
Uncle. Jonathon.
I looked up, my heart racing a billion miles a minute.
All this time, he’d been hiding as Erin Lovell. Possibly. I wasn’t sure, my brain was throbbing.
“Drake…”
My uncle clapped magic from his hands. “Disarm!”
I hit the floor, crippled by searing pain in my stomach. It spread to my extremities, my limbs concrete, spasming to stillness.
The painful way…
What the hell was going on?
He worked quickly for an old man, lighting candles in the hallway, painting red swirls on the walls. Blood.
Blood from Drake and April, both still alive.
Tears leaked down my cheeks, this helplessness devastating. A poisonous magic crackled in my veins, cutting my will off from my body. I pulled on the new moon’s energy, but our connection was interrupted.
Nausea attacked, acidic bubbles popping in the back of my throat.
Jonathon loomed above me with a knife, blood dripping from its tip. “I wanted to do this in a more sophisticated manner.” His voice grated in my ears—old, weak, pathetic, and full of arrogance. “But people always get in the way.”
I blinked, my chest heaving. “What… Where are…” Damn. My throat burned as if an infection manifested inside it.
Magic. Disgusting, filthy magic.
“Don’t worry about it, nephew,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about anything anymore.” He gave me what I assumed he considered to be a sympathetic smile. “If only things were different. Alas, they’re not. You slithered from my dear sister like a disease, and I’m here with the antidote.”
