Page 17 of Alien God

He was saying something to me, I realized distantly. I licked my lips, my exhausted gaze dipping to a broad, angry mouth. Fangs flashed as he spoke, his voice like snow roaring down a mountain.

“I don’t know... I don’t know,” I croaked, not understanding anything he’d said. My head pounded, and I still hadn’t been entirely convinced that this wasn’t some hallucination of a dying brain. Maybe I really was still buried under all that snow...

But his hands on me felt so, so real.

But suddenly, those hands were gone. My knees buckled. Luckily, enough of my weight was pressed backwards against the tree behind me that I slid down its trunk rather than face-planting into the snow. I collapsed to the ground, eyes fluttering closed as weakness made me dizzy.

But I didn’t have time to be dizzy or weak. He’d let me go for some reason, and I wasn’t dead yet. I had to get up. I had to run. Even if I had nowhere to run to.

I cracked my eyes open, then I jolted.

An angel.

For the tiniest moment, in my dazed state, I flashed back to the snow angel I’d made somewhere in this forest, conflating the thing I’d made with the image in front of me. But the one before me now was different. Larger than my powdery snow angel could ever hope to be, with a leathery black wingspan that nearly blotted out the sky. Like the skin on his front, his wings glittered with glorious explosions of blue lights and lines, like an entire universe had been woven into his flesh.

A mane of thick, straight white hair spilled between the wings, ending just above the waistline of tight, black trousers. A long, bushy tail, like a fox’s, was a flash of russet colour contrasting among the white and black and blue. A shift in the light, or maybe a shift in the way the alien held his head, made me notice he had two reddish, fox-like ears, too, poking out from between thick white strands of hair at the top of his head.

Not an angel, I thought, gritting my teeth as I started to rise, panting, to my feet. Not an angel, but a fox-tailed, bat-winged demon. An alien monster I had to get away from at all costs.

Steadying myself against the tree, I raised my foot to take a step.

My boot never hit the ground.

He moved faster than should have been possible, especially for someone his size, all coiled strength and agile muscle. His hands closed around my waist, his wings slamming downward until the world, along with my voice, was ripped entirely away.

The ground was gone.

All that was left was the white and the black and the wings. Red fur, webbed stars.

And the swallowing blue of his eyes.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Wylfrael

The flight to my castle was mercifully short. I was in no shape for a long flight, even though the human female I carried weighed so little. I still wasn’t entirely sure why or how she’d ended up in my arms. I only knew that I could no longer stand about in the woods wasting time when I needed to check on the Sionnachans who lived here. Since I hadn’t killed her yet, and had decided not to leave her, it seemed the only option left was to bring her with me.

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