Damaged Gods by K.C. Cross, J.A. Huss

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR - PIE

Somewhere, a bell is ringing. It’s calling me.

A wave of panic rushes through me as I consider who is summoning me now. Grant? Saturn? Sheriff Roth? What asshole is looking for me now?

The darkness is so absolute that even if I wanted to find that bell, there is no way I could. It’s not possible. I am immersed in a void of nonexistence.

You’re not real, Pie. That’s the new voice in my head.

Before Saint Mark’s it was always, You’re crazy, Pie. I thought that was pretty bad. But nope. This is worse.

Because I am alone, I am afraid, and no one is coming to rescue me.

I have been forsaken.

No. No. There’s a better word for that. It’s called ‘abandoned.’

But just as I think those words, there is a spark in the distance.

I lean forward and take a step, my feet suddenly underneath me. But they are not feet. They are hooves. And when I brush my hands against my hips, there is fur there. The horns are heavy on my head.

“You will say it again,” Ostanes whispers into the nothingness. “Say it again, Pie. And this time… you will really mean it.”

I don’t say it. Because I don’t need to say it.

I feel it in my half-dead monster soul—this is me.

The woods appear. Dark, still, but not empty.

The torch in the distance floats in and out through the shadows of the leaves. Bobbing up and down. This way and that.

And then there he is.

Pell.

Running towards me.

Lighting the way.