Page 94 of Psycho Gods

My heart swelled with emotions I couldn’t afford to feel, so I tipped my head back and lowered my shoulders, swung my arms back and forth as I smoked five pipes at once.

Five.

It had been five days since five people from the Legionnaire Games had been slaughtered in the battle. One angel and one assassin inside the building, two leviathans and one devil outside in the snow as they fought against the ungodly that tried to escape.

All their corpses were unidentifiable.

I didn’t even know the names of the angel and assassin, but I’d fought beside them as the ungodly ripped them apart.

I knew how they’d died.

“Okay, Aran, I see you. Go off.” Sadie rolled her body against me as I tipped my head backward further.

“Hit it. Hit it. Hit it,” she shouted encouragingly as I swung my arms and legs back and forth and squatted low.

I rocked faster.

Smoked harder.

Seventeen was the total number of soldiers we’d lost in the battle, because twelve foot soldiers had died securing the perimeter. There were five odd numbers between five and seventeen.

So many fives.

I grabbed a bottle of demon brew from a student’s hands and tipped it back. Drank until it was empty, then chucked it against the far wall.

It exploded, and students yelped.

Sadie cheered.

The number 5555 was an enchanted one that stood for change.

They’d changed all right. Living to dead.

I wheezed, and my chest tingled.

“Here, sweetie,” Sadie said as she pressed another pipe between my crammed lips. “Have another smoke. This will help.”

I inhaled the drugs until my lungs felt like they were disintegrating inside my sternum.

She was right.

It helped.

I loved her so much; she always knew what I needed.

She pulled me close and whispered into my ear, “We should pretend to have sex in the shower again sometime.”

Never mind—she knew nothing.

“What?” I stopped dancing.

She snickered. “Scorpius told me the other day that he would make you come harder than I ever could.”

I pulled back and gaped at her. “He did not.”

“Yep.” She popped the p loudly. “Then he told me my stroke game was weak.” She smirked as she shimmied her hips. “I told him I was better at giving head because I was a girl and knew what felt best.”

I choked on smoke. “You did not say that.”

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