Page 21 of Lunar Desires
I kept my rising fury at bay, biding my time. Better to fight him after getting some potential answers. Because, oh boy, did I need some damn answers.
He looked left, pointing. “Path. Path there.”
“There’s nothing there.”
“Moon mine. Son is Moon.” He swung his finger around to me, his face contorting, rippling. “Will have Moon.”
In the blink of an eye, he became the shade again. I gasped, fear like a kick in the gut. But I performed a backward roll, taught to me by Alice Bramble—the purest gym bunny of the triplets charged with helping us train.
I jumped to my feet, Aurora power singing in my veins.
You won’t have me!
The bite scar on my left thigh throbbed in remembrance of the night of the attack.
Damn the shade. Damn all of this. I wouldn’t fall apart like I used to.
“Moon!” the shade hissed, growing in size.
I smacked aside a tirade of memories of the attack, hitting him with my Tidal Pull power, wrenching him slightly forward, then flinging him upward.
“Moon!” he roared, hitting the ceiling.
Wait. What ceiling?
Molly’s secret room returned around me, the shade exploding in a puff of blue.
“Riley?”
Drake’s voice.
I faced him, his face covered with blood from a wound on his forehead, his expression twisted with pain.
Rejuvenating adrenaline flooded my system, my body teeming with energy, like a battery at full charge.
But my stomach rolled over Drake’s current state, my breath hitching. “What… Oh my God. You’re hurt.”
I never wanted to see him hurt.
“I’m alright,” he said.
“High Coven!” a voice barked upstairs.
What the hell?
“They’ve found us.” Drake moved closer to me, limping slightly.
Heavy footfalls pounded above, voices raised, danger imminent. On the TV screen, witchcops stormed the shop, searching every nook, pulling merchandise off the shelves. And they were coming down the stairs. It wouldn’t be long until they found the secret room.
If the witchcops arrested me, grilled me, they’d soon discover who I was. We couldn’t let such a can of worms lose its lid right now.
“You have to go,” Molly said.
I glanced at the goblin, her face also covered in blood. She limped over to the wall near the TV, running a finger along the pasted posters in five diagonal lines.
The lines of a door appeared, tearing the paper open. It slid inward, moving off to the side, revealing the first few steps of a staircase descending into darkness.
“High Coven!” a woman boomed from behind the other secret door. “Whoever’s here, come out with your hands up!”
