76. WEN

“One.”

The satisfied purr resonates in my marrow, shakes apart my bones. My vision bursts in and out of focus to the sight of the enormous, insane god filling it. His blazing eyes and the moonlit clouds are the only things illuminating the heartbreaking glory of his face, like the intertwining fingers of a nightmare of fire and ice.

I stare at him, comprehension an impossibility, numbness spreading.

He elaborates. “One orgasm—when I didn’t even attempt any of my inflated promises—and you brought down the ceiling. A few more, and you’ll demolish the whole place. By the time I’m inside you, and I make you come all over my cock, this whole region will be one endless crater.”

Horror cascades through my warped perception in a slow-motion avalanche as my hazy gaze wrenches away from his macabre gratification. It moves towards the mountain of debris where Sarah and the others had been, the tomb I’ve created …

No. No. I couldn’t have. I protect her. It’s all I’ve ever wanted, all I’ve ever done.

But she’s strong now, has survived the Trials, and has been thriving in this Academy, more so the tougher things got. She even withstood Godric’s shockwave, which would have pulverized any other human. Because she’s no longer human. She’s growing into something so powerful and amazing, even Godric considers her dangerous.

She wouldn’t get seriously hurt by falling debris. If I could survive an exploding building coming down on me as a baby, this is nothing for her.

Yes, yes. She’s just trapped now. Once I get her out, I’ll take her, all of them, to the Sanatorium. Whatever injuries they have now, they’ll heal them. They’ll be okay.

But I can’t get them out without Godric.

The desperate need restarts my brain and body as I turn to him. But before I can invoke his promise to protect them, his indulgent smile morphs into a grim frown, and his wings explode out of his back.

My heart flails as I follow his gaze to the source of his vehemence, and my consciousness almost gives way again under a new wave of dread.

I’d know those wings anywhere. Lorcan’s. And Gideon’s.

They’re flying towards us from Godric’s massacre scene.

Once they’re close enough I see they’re in as terrible a condition as Godric was before his healing kicked in. Their clothes are tattered, their bodies covered in blood and the injuries they’ve inflicted on each other, and their faces pummeled beyond recognition.

In the back of my sluggish mind, I’m wondering why I see them so clearly in this darkness, until I realize it’s Godric. He’s—iridescing, as if with pent up Angel Essence.

“You arsehole,” Gideon bellows. “It’ll take us a week to work out which body part belongs to whom. Good thing I don’t have to wait that long to bash your loathsome face in. Now you’ve snuffed his motherfuckers wholesale, Father will award me a Laurus for it.”

Godric looms larger over me, his eerie light intensifying. “I told you what would happen if you followed me, Gideon. Seems you’re not very attached to your arms.”

I shudder at the quiet thunder in his voice. This is the first time all night I’ve felt an actual emotional response from him, towards anyone but me. If Gideon was in his right mind, I bet even he would have balked. But this madness seems to be self-perpetuating, and won’t abate until it has wreaked maximum damage.

“Try it, you bloody fucker,” Gideon sneers as he crashlands like his half-brother always does, cracking the ground beneath us. “You will crawl away with far more damage than you did after that nuke.”

“Oh, shut the fucking Heaven up, you shitheads,” Lorcan hisses as he lands with the same force, his usually teasing voice laced with venom. “I’m not spending eternity steeped in your petty feud. Ripping your tongues out would do this Afterworld a favor.”

Gideon tosses Lorcan a glance of equal loathing. “You’re just like your old man, you pathetic second fiddle. Your brains are too small to accommodate big ideas. After all he’s put you through, the worst you can think of is ripping his tongue out? This bastard has hung onto his head for far longer than he should have.”

Lorcan’s swollen lips twist at Gideon. “Same goes for you, you bloody prat. Which gives me the big idea of ripping off both of yours.”

I try to sit up, to do anything to put a stop to this before it deteriorates any further, but Godric gives me a staying stroke as he impales Gideon on his displeasure. “I rarely agree with anything that comes out of your foul mind and mouth, you cocky tosser. But we do seem beyond the ripping-arms-off stage. I have been holding back from rending you limb from limb for a while now.”

Gideon ignores his threat, the turquoise flames in his eyes bursting higher as he seems to notice me for the first time. “What were you doing to Wen?”

Lorcan’s eyes ignite like a flaming oil spill as they meet mine. “Was he forcing himself on you?”

It’s then I remember I’m almost naked, and that my upper body is still cradled in Godric’s lap, while he holds the legs that had melted off his shoulders, and are now splayed wide over his waist.

I feel Godric’s ire rising as looks between them. “If you want to keep your limbs and organs in place, walk away, both of you. Now.”

Gideon grins, a horrible twist in his distorted face, making him look the part of the monster he is. “I have a better idea. We rip you apart. But since collateral damage is your kink, let Wen go first, you filthy pervert.”

Godric only scoffs, dismissing him and looking down at me, the blaze of annoyance being replaced by hunger as he strokes my thighs.

“Give her up, Godric.” Lorcan’s menacing voice pelts me like a blast of embers.

In response, Godric scoops me to his chest, as if hoarding a treasure, before he rises in the air, his wings curving around me in a protective shroud. “You bastards are never taking her from me.”

Darkness that feels like a hundred evil souls swarm around Gideon as he floats after us as effortlessly. “We’ll see about that, you odious fuck.”

Lorcan’s rises to flank us on the other side, the force rippling around him suffocating, crushing, what I imagine the depths of the ocean would feel like. “Give. Her. Up.”

If I thought Gideon’s goading made him angry, Lorcan’s order brings out something I could have never imagined erupting out of him.

Wrath. Ancient and annihilating.

Then he utters one word. Endless possession and eternal endings made sound.

“Never.”

The terrible passion and intention radiating from Godric almost snuffs out my consciousness.

It sears past the cacophony filling my head, the thickness tying my tongue, and I croak, “Lorcan, Gideon, get the Hell away from here. Please, I beg you, just?—”

The world zooms around me, and I blink out of existence.

When I crash back into being, I find myself suspended in the air again, looking down on another climactic showdown.

But this one is far, far more violent, and far more evenly matched. These archangelspawn are his second and third in command for a reason. While not as powerful as he is, it feels as if they’re drawing off each other’s powers, amplifying them in the process. They did something like that, when they came to Godric’s aid in his fight against the Cadre. But this time, they are unifying against him, and they’re out for blood. His.

While he … he’s mind-numbing.

When he’d fought the Cadre, he’d been disoriented, yet he’d fought with perfect restraint. And when he’d faced off with the rogue nephilim, he’d fought with cold strategy, terminal efficiency, yet no bloodlust.

Now the voracious savagery, the volatile fury blasting off of him are proof he’s no longer in pseudo-control of his insanity. These two are way too close, and their threat is all too real, the worst of it being the one they pose in his mind, to me. To what we have, whatever it is.

If he considered Sarah and the others worth eliminating as an obstacle between us down the road, he considers these two clear and present dangers. With them, his emotions are fully involved, driving him closer with every blow to a total breakdown of his control.

Yet, there’s something more here. Something beyond dread, for Sarah, for these guys and the rest of the Academy, is tearing at my own sanity. It feels like it”s been staring me in the face since Godric walked up to me on the dance floor, but I still can’t grasp it…

Suddenly, my heart almost explodes. At the horrific realization of what has been happening to him all night.

I’ve been thinking that when all his conditioning is gone, he would lose what made him himself.

But it’s the other way around.

Losing his self-imposed control and manufactured restraint is actually boiling him down to the stark alloy of his true self. To what he fundamentally is.

A harbinger of death.