Page 22 of Alien God

The phrase didn’t feel quite right. I doubted his actions were benevolent. He had to have hurt, probably even killed, some of the other humans to have forced them into such a quick retreat. An obscene amount of money had gone into this mission, and only a threat of terrible, existential proportions would have made the crew abandon it.

He didn’t save me. He just didn’t want death to take me out of his control.

The thought made my movements flighty and frantic. My lungs were cold fire, my throat agony, my legs on the brink of collapse.

I’m not going to make it much further.

I cried out in horrified shock when the snow directly in front of me rose up, like a tidal wave, freezing into a two-metre-tall barrier that blocked my path.

How is this even real? Even the snow doesn’t want me to leave!

Not knowing what else to do, in a defeated gesture of anguish, I kicked at the newly-formed wall. It accomplished nothing, which infuriated me, making me want to kick it again and again and again.

A sound from behind me, a single growled word, stopped me. The voice was gruff yet somehow smooth, like tearing silk, and I knew who’d called to me before I even turned around.

I turned around anyway.

Light spilling out from the open door behind him made him into a brutal silhouette. A winged shadow of carved stone and leather, velvet and ice, all black apart from the pinpricks of blue on his skin and the arresting flames of his gaze. One of his arms was raised. He flicked his hand in an almost leisurely gesture, and I heard the snow wall topple into a useless heap behind me.

It was him. He made the wall...

The snow wall had fallen, but I knew that I was more cornered than ever before. He didn’t need to speak for me to understand what his hand and his eyes and the looming archangel shadow of his body told me.

The night air was still but heavy with meaning, the truth loud in the snow-drenched silence.

He said nothing.

You cannot run from me, is what I heard.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Torrance

I returned inside with my winged captor. There was no other choice. He clearly wasn’t going to let me run off into the forest, and even if he had allowed me that, it would have meant certain death for me out there without the shelter and resources of the ship.

I can’t believe the ship is gone...

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