I bring the black wood and silver metal-ringed staff to my chest and hold it like it’s precious. The faces of the Hellgate Guardians flash past my eyes. I thought I was going to spend my life connected to the four of them, but that reality was just yanked away, and an overwhelming feeling of drowning takes over.
Iceman’s patient blue features and crown-like horns swim forward in my mind. Crux’s twinkling, mischievous green eyes and beach bum good looks fight for my attention next. I can practically feel the heat radiating off of Jerif as I recall the look on his face when the lava demon told me to run. I wish more than anything right now that I could crawl into the deep abyss of Echo’s eyes and live the rest of my life there with him in the shadows that he commands so expertly. I miss them. I want to be where they are. Anything would be better than this white nothingness all around me. I hate this.
I hate it.
I stare at the scythe in my hands and shake my head. Like I’m some fucked up, possessed human Uber not in my right mind, I wrap both my palms around the staff and then slam the end of it against the smooth, colorless ground. I want to smash this place into smithereens. Break it until it resembles what I feel on the inside.
I slam the scythe down again and again, the hits reverberating up my arms and into my chest, like they’re trying to soothe me. With inky black rage bleeding into my vision, I scream like a banshee and fling the tears from my cheeks as I do my best to gouge the snowy floor under my feet.
Bam!
For my mom.
Bam!
For my dad.
The scythe thunks loudly as it connects with the ground again, and I picture each of my demons’ faces and demand retribution. I won’t stop until this place is as cracked as my heart.
Bam!
“For me!” I shriek out as my arms grow heavy and my body tired from the fury I’m expelling and the abuse I’m delivering to the only thing I can punish in this place other than myself.
“Excuse me!” The voice thunders all around me, making me jump. “Exactly what do you think you are doing to my meditation room?” the smooth arrogant voice demands.
I whirl around, shocked, and find a breathtakingly beautiful winged man stomping toward me. I’m so stunned by his presence, that it’s like my brain just stutters to a stop, in need of rebooting. Tanned skin and a chiseled body quickly closes the distance between us. He has long flowing golden blond hair, and the massive wings behind him are the same lustrous tones of sepia-gilded feathers.
He’s terrifyingly beautiful and clearly very pissed. His gray-wash skinny jeans hug the thick muscles in his thighs, and the white Henley he’s wearing looks damp like he just threw it on after a shower.
“Who are you, and how did you get in here?” he demands. As he gets closer, I can see his eyes are gray with gold flecks around the pupil. If looks could kill, I’d be dust already.
Instinctually, I tighten my hold on my scythe, and the slight movement immediately draws his attention. His aristocratic features and sharp jawline tense, and his eyes take on a wary caution as he studies me.
“Has your tongue been cut out?” he asks haughtily. His unimpressed eyes rake over me. “You’re not a Grim,” he declares more to himself than me. “I demand to know what you’re doing in my house. Who let you in?”
The word house forces me to look around with confusion. How is this a house? All I can see is endless white. Unless...
“Are you...God?” My tongue nearly sticks to the roof of my mouth.
I was expecting God to be older and less pompous, but what the hell do I know about anything?
A wry smile sneaks across his handsome face. “No, but if you’re here to join my menagerie, be sure to scream that out when I visit you,” he tells me, one eyebrow shooting up in invitation. Did he just...proposition me for sex? I frown, studying him. His lips go a little too Zoolander to be considered attractive, in my opinion. I’m not sure who this is, but I feel like I’m suffocating on the conceit that’s wafting off his heavily muscled body.
I mean, I guess he might scratch an itch for a certain kind of girl, but I’m not her. My brow furrows, and I take a step back like his arrogance might be contagious. This seems to puzzle the angel-guy even more.
“Um, if you’re not God, then who are you?
He puffs out his chest with indignation, his wings flaring out behind him. “I asked you first! This is your last chance, or I’ll have you hung by your wings and flogged at Luce’s next revelry,” he threatens, like I know what any of that means.
Wait. Wings?
I twist and look back over my shoulder, but all I catch is a lot of purple. “What the…” I reach over my shoulder to push my hair out of the way, but instead, my hand lands on the crest of a wing that appears to be covered in soft bright violet feathers.
What the fuck!
I lift my shoulders nearly to my ears, and the wings fucking move with them. I snatch my hand away like I touched something gross and snap my face forward, my eyes wide and horrified. “I have bright purple wings!” I shriek.
“Any imp could see that.” Not-God snaps, clearly fed up with my lack of answers.
“Get them off me!” I try to lean away from the feathered appendages that are evidently attached to my back. “Get them off me right now!” I squeal, like it’s a spider attacking me and not bird parts fused with my parts.
“How dare you!” Not-God bellows, his face reddening as my panic climbs to an all-time high.
The sound of flapping wings and the feel of beaks pecking at me fills my mind. I tried to throw the last of the food in my hand as far away as possible, but the peckerhead doves were too stupid to realize that I didn’t have anything for them anymore. In a matter of seconds, I was swarmed. The vile beasts were intent on ending my life one flap and nip at a time. I screamed for my mom, terrified. But by the time she cleared all the evil doves away from me, I was traumatized for life.
Not-God yells at me, but I’m stuck in the horrible memory. I keep turning around to look at them, like I can try to find a way to get them to detach. I barely make out the fact that he yells for someone else. I’m clearly too freaked out to do anything but lose my shit over the fact that I have wings now attached to my back. I fucking hate birds, and now the parts I hate the most are the parts of them that are stuck to me.
I run my fingers through my hair as anxiety pumps through me, but I scream when my hand brushes a wing again.
“Oh, God, gross! So fucking gross! Get ’em off!” I demand again, and something in my tone sends Not-God into a panic too.
“Get what off?” he yells at me, his golden blond wings snapping irritably behind him as he looks all over my body, like he’s expecting to find a bug crawling on my skin.
Another panicked shriek rips out of my mouth as I watch his wings move closer to me, and it’s like I’m right back in the park, ten years old again and screaming as the flock descends on my body.
Someone else comes running toward us, but I’m hyperventilating at this point and have to put my hands on my knees and force myself to breathe, so I’m unable to make out who’s here. My disgusting wings are heavy on my back, making me feel like I might topple over. They make their presence known like a whispered threat telling me I’m never going to get away now.
“Is Lucifer pranking me?” Not-God asks of whoever is also in the room.