Page 55 of Sin

Lucas managed to scurry back out of range from me now that my attention was elsewhere, and I struggled to keep my eye on both him and London.

London came at me again, arcing something too fast to avoid against my stomach. I didn’t feel pain at first, only pressure. Then a searing fire laced my belly, making me choke on my next breath as white-hot agony raged through me.

That’s when I spotted a shard of one of the broken mirrors clutched in his hand. With everything going on, I’d forgotten to suit back up, and this was my consequence.

“I’m a little snake,” I choked out.

Grasping at my stomach with one arm, I barely managed to block London’s next attack with my other, now fully covered, arm as he came at me again. The glass shattered against the suit, and I didn’t think I’d ever been more thankful for Lewis’s nanotechnology. The suit engulfed me, and though I couldn’t see my injury beneath the material, my stomach wound continued to leak blood, painting the inside of the suit with warmth.

London came at me again and again, now using his fists. And since we wore suits made of the same material, his hits packed a punch and had me crashing to the ground.

Vaguely, I noticed Lucas crawling toward something on the ground. But when London threw another punch at me, I quickly got distracted.

London, still under Lucas’s thrall, straddled me. We’d been in similar positions before, but this was the first time he’d wrapped his hands around my neck and squeezed as if he planned to end me.

Fear constricted my chest, making it hard to breathe. Or maybe that was just London restricting my airway. My bloody hand grabbed London’s arm, shaking him hard, needing him to snap out of his trance.

“London!” I shouted directly into his face. “London, you need to snap out of it!”

My command seemed to work for a brief moment, and London’s horrified gaze snagged on mine.

“Sin, help m—”

His words choked out as he was sucked back under Lucas’s thrall, and a groan of pain came from behind us, making me wonder if Lucas was overexerting himself right now. I really hoped so because I didn’t have much power left, and I knew I needed to focus it on Lucas and not London.

Cut off the head and all that.

Lucas started muttering unintelligibly behind us, and then I saw him grab something from inside a bag, but even with my night vision, I couldn’t see what it was in the dark. When he pressed the small object to his body, I guessed it to be a syringe.

His tremors slowed, and he rolled his shoulders, like the pain he’d been in wasn’t as severe anymore.

Shit. What the hell had he injected himself with?

“Put on the cuffs!” I shouted at him, just as London clocked me in the jaw, making me see stars and taste copper. I cursed and took a deep breath as I blocked the next punch aimed at my face. “Put on the damn cuffs, Lucas!”

Lucas staggered, and once again, his hold on London’s mind pulled back. London coughed, clambering off of me and staggering several steps away. He looked between me and Lucas, and his jaw clicked in anger.

“Get out of here!” I screamed at London, needing him gone like yesterday. He was a weakness, and Lucas very obviously knew it.

But he didn’t move. His face slackened once again.

For fuck’s sake!

“It’s your choice,” Lucas croaked, his words slightly slurred as if drugged. He was stalking toward me. But then I blinked and saw him walking away. He stepped through a mirror… No! Not a mirror, a doorway? No, that wasn’t right either. He was definitely heading my way. Wasn’t he?

I clenched my teeth in concentration as his power did its best to confuse me, making reality and fiction collide.

“You can either capture me or,” he said, cocking his head at London, “you can save… London, is it?”

My fingers snagged the cuffs, and I jumped at Lucas, ignoring the pain in my stomach. I caught him around his middle and threw him to the ground, trying to wrangle the cuffs on him. I finally managed to lock one around his wrist, but he just laughed and laughed. And that’s when I got a glimpse of something in one of the mirrors.

My head whipped to the side, seeing London clutching a broken piece of mirror. His expression was slack-faced as he sliced slowly across his neck.

“No!” I screamed, but it was too late…

Then the image was suddenly gone, jolting me like waking from a bad dream.

Instead of the horrifying scene from before, I saw London simply bending to grab the broken piece of mirror. Like Lucas had shown me what he’d told London to do but it hadn’t happened yet.

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