Page 270 of Psycho Gods

My wings were too heavy.

Lying back against Sadie’s body, wings spread wide—a fallen angel who’d never gotten to fly—I dropped the sword and ripped at my feathers with both hands.

Flung them at the faceless bodies.

I knew in my gut that it was the end; there was nothing to analyze. No strategy left. I prayed they’d eat my heart, because I couldn’t live in a world without Sadie.

I hiccuped between gasps.

Tears streamed down my face as I flung feathers blindly.

In the end, I wasn’t strong enough; in the end, all the power in the world wasn’t enough to save us.

Please sun god, save Sadie. Take me instead, the world needs her lightness. I sobbed. The world doesn’t need any more darkness, and that’s all I can give. It needs her. So badly. She has so much goodness to offer. She’s too pure to end like this. I need her. Tears blinded me. I need her so fucking badly. I can’t live without her. I can’t. Please.

I wrenched a feather off my wing and flung it.

It clattered across the floor.

Shadows descended.

All around.

Hallucinating, I imagined the ground quaking beneath me. Portraits rattled as they fell off the walls, bricks rained down as the ceiling opened up, and a divine figure dropped from above.

The shadows turned toward the figure.

They stopped ascending.

I blinked.

I wasn’t imagining it.

The monsters had really turned around.

Before I could be grateful, a heinous sound, too unimaginable for words, made every muscle in my body seize in agony. I was paralyzed by it.

Then it stopped.

Blessed relief flooded through me, and I gasped for air. Sadie was limp and warm beneath me.

I blinked, blurry vision clearing.

A handful of infected and ungodly stood in the center of the room, and all of them were frozen still with their mouths open wide as their eyes danced with a strange kaleidoscope of colors.

I’d never seen anything like it.

A soft voice chanted.

I pressed shaking fingers to my eyes and dragged them away, but the scene remained.

I rolled off Sadie and crawled forward on my hands and knees through piles of substances I refused to think about. My heavy wings trailed behind me like a downed butterfly’s.

Head lifted high, I squinted as I peered between the legs of the infected.

I stopped.

Immediately I wished I hadn’t crawled forward, because now the image was burned into my memory.