Page 32 of Lunar Desires (Celestial Magic #2)
RILEY
P ain seared my muscles, Tidal Pull snapping off. It slapped me with a grumpy ricochet, annoyed at the sudden shutdown. I flew back, slamming into the fiery wall. Catching alight, my clothes going up.
I screamed, flames licking at my face, singeing my hair, burning, burning, burning.
Hitting the ground, I rolled, screaming for mercy. My God! The agony! The damn agony! Unlike any pain I’d experienced, a war against every cell. Completely bypassing any feeble attempts of the Rubberskin to keep me safe.
What a way to go out!
I couldn’t think, only submit to the pain. Wait for the end. Wait for my body to give up, to hit the button for the escape pod out of this sphere of torment.
What’s happening?
What’s happening?
What’s happening?
Light. The bright light.
Here comes the end…
Dammit!
But the light caressed me with so much care. Packed with love—the brotherly kind, removing the pain, applying mystical salve to my burns, knitting the burned flesh back together, repairing my hair. Healing the biting agony in my leg.
Shot.
I’ve been shot.
Tender, loving, brotherly sunlight put me back together again.
Isaac…
I was okay. I wasn’t meeting the final light. Thank Hecate! Moving on wasn’t part of my agenda right now.
Things became clearer, renewing moonlight flowing through me.
I sat up, rolling my neck.
Shot…
A chilly wind blew around me, the fire funnel gone.
Shot…
As much as the moon fed me, things were foggy, my thoughts tangled in a web.
I rubbed my eyes, a body on my left.
“Isaac?”
He lay on his back, eyelids heavy. Drowsy.
“You good?” he asked.
“Yeah. Thanks for healing me.”
He yawned, clearly fatigued. He’d burned through his healing magic, now suffering the consequences.
My memory was still a little hazy. “I hit the fire.” God, I remembered that part. “But I got shot, right? Someone shot me?”
He passed out.
Crap.
“I shot you.”
I spotted his legs first, then the serious expression.
Drake.
I rubbed my eyes again, his words not sinking in. I clocked Jake and some witchcops, along with a dead body.
Uncle Jonathon.
“Riley?”
He shot you…
Drawing a soothing circle on my left palm, I lifted my gaze to him.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
The glow of the blue stone leaked between the fingers of his balled fist, a gun in his other hand.
He shot you…
I swallowed a nasty lump, like clay packed with jagged nails. “W-why did you do that?”
Drake crouched, his face full of regret. “Breaking the stone would have killed everyone.” He told me about his brief visit to the fae woman.
Oh. My. God.
Jake came over to say he’d shot Uncle Jonathon in the heart, and witchcops were now storming Ashwood Manor for the sixth part of him.
“I…” My chest tightened under a tangle of rusty chains. They crushed and I wheezed, sliding back on the wet asphalt. A wave of panic bore down on me, a nasty stream of ice flowing in my veins.
I almost committed mass murder…
“No…” I said. “No…”
I might have been skirting the edges of a dark pit, but this took the damn biscuit.
This went beyond my comprehension, my entire being not built to cope with this.
Dangerous forces drove an infected stake into my soul, poison seeping in, infecting everything.
Ruining me, spreading to my sparkle with deadly tendrils.
To strangle.
To end.
To defeat.
If Drake hadn’t shot me, we’d all be dead, along with so many civilians. A twenty-mile radius from this point extinguished so many lives in one swoop.
Friends. Colleagues. Family.
Mum and Peter dead.
My friends Danny and Lee dead.
Carol and the rest of the fabulous library crew dead.
Because of me. Because I couldn’t keep a cool head. Because I let the dark slither in, corrupting me.
Dead.
Dead.
Dead.
The horror sickened me to the core. Breaking me. I collapsed onto my side, bursting into tears. I curled into a ball as guilt tormented me, ravaging everything I had. Kicking, stomping, leaving no part unbruised.
And I deserved it.
Oh, did I deserve it.
“Riley…”
The wind swallowed Drake’s voice, or maybe I pushed it away.
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now. As far as I was concerned, I’d failed as much as my wretched uncle.
Already. At least he’d had a few years to mess up.
Not me. Straight away, I’d given in to a lust for violence, kicking down the first hurdle.
“I don’t want it,” I whispered.
Hecate could take this power and give it to someone better.
“Take it. Take it. Take it.”
A prayer from the damned.
A prayer from a total scoundrel.
“Please take it…”