Page 3 of Alien God

But...

The gates had not been opened.

A lone male restrained Skalla. I could not see him well – he stood behind Skallagrim, and though he was about as tall, Skallagrim was broader, blocking my view. But even so, I recognized the arm looped around Skallagrim’s neck, muscles straining beneath black hide interspersed with the glowing stars and veins of a magma-coloured star map.

Maerwynne.

I still did not understand why the council had not opened the gates. But I did not allow myself to stand idle for long. Maerwynne was a powerful stone sky god, but, like me, he was no match for Skallagrim alone.

But between the two of us...

Between the two of us, maybe we’d be able to finally kill him.

It was what I’d wanted to avoid. It was why I’d used all my strength to drag Skalla here in the first place. To bind him instead of end him.

But he was already overpowering Maerwynne.

And I had no choice but to attack him with everything I had. I flew at my cousin, snarling and striking as he shoved Maerwynne away. Maerwynne jumped back into the fray immediately, trying and failing to catch Skallagrim’s heavy, smashing limbs. One of those limbs – the boulder of his fist, it turned out – connected with my temple and sent me reeling. I staggered, righting myself just in time to see Maerwynne thrown against the white stone so hard a crack formed beneath the black and red lines of his body.

A mere moment later, Skallagrim was in the air, throttling upward, fist rising.

No!

I knew what he was doing.

“He’s going to open a sky door!” I need not have bothered saying it. Maerwynne knew it already. He launched into the air, and I followed, my weary wings straining.

But we were both too slow. The sky turned dark and opaque ahead of Skallagrim, hardening into stone. Skallagrim brought down his fist against it, cracking it with a catastrophic boom. The door was open now – a wide, dark crack in the stone of the sky. Without a glance back, Skalla hurled himself inside.

Before we could reach the door, the stone began to disintegrate, ebbing away like the vestiges of a half-forgotten dream dissipating into dawn.

“No!” I roared, clawing at the shimmering mist, all that remained of the stone sky that had been so solid just a heartbeat before. “Maerwynne, open another. I’m too weak.”

If we opened another door now, before Skallagrim’s power faded completely from the air, we’d be able to track him to whichever world he’d fled to. But if we waited too long, the lingering traces of his path across the stars would be lost.

I ground my fangs when I realized Maerwynne was not moving to open a sky door.

“Maerwynne,” I growled, my voice laced with deadly fury. At this point after the battle, Maerwynne was much stronger than I was. And I had no right to threaten him. But I couldn’t let Skallagrim escape. Not now. “Open the sky door.”

Maerwynne’s eyes met mine. The red within black of his gaze reminded me so much of twin crescent moons, two curving scarlet slashes in each dark eye, their tips meeting at the top and bottom, creating deep black pools in the middle.

“You have been gone a long time, Wylfrael,” Maerwynne said slowly. “I have much news to share.”

“News can wait!” I snapped. Who knew where Skalla had ended up? Who knew how much damage he was doing already? He should have found her... He should have found her by now!

“I do not think so,” Maerwynne said. His voice was even, but I was not so stupid from my wounds to miss the hardened edge of warning there. “Things have come to pass that make Skallagrim the least of your concerns.”

“My mate-mad cousin nearly killing me, twice, and then going on a bloody, berserker rage through the cosmos is the least of my concerns?” I scoffed. “You must take me for a fool.”

“I do not.”

I stared at Maerwynne in disbelief. Our wings held us aloft, making us into mirror images of each other. Maerwynne’s star map was a different colour than mine, flame-like against the darkness of his black hide, but its shape was identical. Since we were currently on the same world, our star maps showed the same thing, the constellations stretched over our bodies in the exact same positions, reminding us where we stood in the universe.

Except...

Except, our star maps weren’t the same. The stars that should have glowed on his lower left arm, the way mine did, were gone.

He caught the direction of my gaze and raised his left hand in the air between us. His mouth twisted in a mirthless smile as he closed his starless fist.

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