Page 35 of Lunar Desires
“What about Drake?”
Still no answer.
Turning the car around, the driver took off.
“What about Drake?” I repeated.
The speaker crackled. “Why don’t you sit back and?—”
Pop!
Chapter 10
RILEY
Ipopped up into what seemed to be a hospital room of brilliant white with the odd splash of blue tiles, a bright light blazing in the ceiling above the single bed by the window.
Wow. Someone grab me some sunglasses.
Two doctors in blue coats, along with three nurses in their blue scrubs, called out in surprise.
I went down onto my knees, retching again. “Crap…”
“Security!” a man cried.
An alarm went off, its wail an assault on my ears.
“What…” I fell onto my backside. “This is…damn slime.” Dizziness held me in its grip, my poor brain like a spider caught in the pipe of a vacuum cleaner.
I always felt bad for the eight-legged creatures whenever I went at them with the vacuum. I didn’t want to hurt them, but they couldn’t be sitting around freaking me out. It was them or me, especially when it came to the biggies.
What the hell was I thinking about? My God, the slime performed a serious number on my brain.
Okay. Focus. Hospital room. Alarm putting a strain on my eardrums. A bed. A man on the bed fixed to machines going beep, beep, beep.
“Drake!” I cried once it twigged, trying to get upright. I tumbled back onto my arse, letting out a grunt of exasperation. “I’m coming, Drake. I’m?—”
Witchcops stormed the room, quickly manhandling me out of the room and into a gleaming white corridor. They carried me away as I kicked and screamed and puked over a guy, the lights above too bright, my head spinning to the point of making me weep.
“Please…I…I…”
They lifted me into the air, carrying me like I was crowd surfing.
Dark fury passed over me. A temptation to smash their faces into the walls, the floor, the cleaning, through the glass windows of the rooms we passed flooded through me. Watch those skulls crack like eggs, hear them whimper and wail and beg as their blood sprayed the whiteness in red.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kill them. Destroy them. Teach them not to mess with an Aurora.
I gave up the fight in rejection of those thoughts. My body went so limp they almost dropped me.
“Easy there,” a man said, his voice kind of soothing.
Easy, huh? Easy was a funny word in the context of my new life. I’d taken to my powers easily, the whole transition from shimmer witch to sacred witch pretty smooth. But the other stuff dropped boulders in the road. This bloodlust, this anger, this skirting of arrogance. How was I supposed to navigate it without becoming the new Uncle Jonathon?
Oh, God. Talk about a horror story. I’d never be like him.
Please don’t let me become him…
There were many perks of my blood. Was this the downside? I mean, it wasn’t like I was possessed by some dark spirit or anything. More like a conflict of interest between myself and my destiny. I knew I had to kill, to fight, to be strong. It was good to get angry with shades, Uncle Jonathon, and all the bad crap in the world. And to harbor animosity for the High Coven. After all, they’d destroyed my family, drove my real mum to kill herself, keeping the truth of my identity hidden until now.
