The light shining out of the god drop was too bright to see anything but each other, but as soon as we stepped inside, my feathers prickled and stood on end.

That stink. Blood and something worse—the insides of a body, outside.

I yanked Cherie to a stop beside me.

“Angelpunk, what—”

“Get out.” I shoved her behind me and flared my wings, high and wide, even though I knew I couldn’t intimidate that smell away.

“What are you doing?” Cherie sounded amused, like she thought this was another time where I didn’t understand something from her world. But I understood the stink of fresh death. I had never smelled so much of it in one place before, but I knew what it was.

I put out my spurs. “Get out of here. Go!”

Behind us, the gold stone scraped as it swung shut. It banged into place, and my heart started pounding so hard that I had to strain to hear anything over it.

That golden light filling the cave dimmed. As it did, the towering bodies of gods appeared, shining and strange and completely bald of feathers.

And covered in blood and yellow chunks of fat.

One of the gods held a huge knife in a fist and the angel guy in all black and white who’d been ahead of us earlier in the other. The guy dangled upside down by one leg, his arms and wings hanging over his head, just like the gold angels that surrounded the stone outside. Blood had ran from a slash across his throat, streaking his cheeks and speckling his wings with red.

The god with the knife handed him to another god, who started stripping off the angel guy’s black and white shoes and clothes. Onto the pile went his black coat with the white sleeves, his pants, the square of plastic he’d been talking to. Meanwhile the blood dripped down the expression of shock on the guy’s face.

I heard the gods speaking, their voices like overflowing rivers and far-off thunder. The god with the knife frowned at me. The clothes-stripping god laughed and swung the angel, naked, pale, and bloodless, onto a wide ledge.

The god pulled out a knife, slit open the bloodless angel’s belly, and started scooping guts out with its huge hand. The angel guy’s pale, fatty skin stretched tight over the god’s huge, digging hand. Over the pounding in my ears, I could hear the wet squelching.

My head felt hot and like it was full of down feathers. Protect her, protect Cherie, was all I could think.

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On the other side of the ledge, away from the pile of clothes and shoes and plastic squares, was a neat stack. I couldn’t make sense of it at first. I didn’t know what those things were that looked like angels, but with wings made of flesh.

Then I saw the god had finished scooping out the angel guy’s guts and had started pulling feathers out of his wings.

I swayed on the spot. Red came into the sides of my vision. That was a stack of angel bodies. Bloodless. Featherless. Belly skin hanging limp and stretched over emptied guts. Mouths hanging open like they couldn’t believe this had happened.

The gods kept talking, more than I’d ever heard a god talk before, back and forth between them, just like angels do when we’re together. I couldn’t understand most of it, but I heard my name and Cherie’s.

She heard it, too. “Yes? That’s me. I’m Cherie.”

She tried to get around me, but I held her back with one arm. Did she not see what was going on? Could she not understand? She might think no one ever died here, but did that mean she couldn’t recognize death when it was all around her?

“Stop it, Angelpunk,” she said, pushing back against my arm, fighting to get to them. “I’m here, gods, I’m right here! Ouch!” She’d cut herself on my elbow spur.

The frowning god moved. Its long, long legs put it right in front of us in a single step.

Every muscle in my body coiled tight. I’ll kill it. I’ll kill it. I’ll kill it.

The god said something. It was talking to me.

Its foot came sweeping sideways toward me. I jumped and spurred the god in the leg, beating my wings. The cave shook with the god’s shout. Cherie screamed. I kept throwing my elbow and ankle spurs and battering it with my wings.

The god swung its fist at me. I tumbled backward, feet and hands already scrabbling at the ground for some kind of hold. Finally, they caught.

I sprinted. My ears were ringing, and my head kept dipping. Night tried to come over me from all sides, but it wasn’t the right time for the stone sleep. I couldn’t slow down or the pain and the sleep would catch me. I ran harder.

Something wide and solid slammed into me. It smashed me up against the wall of the cave, and pushed until all my lungs were crushed flat and it felt like my eyes were going to pop out of my head.

The other god, the one who had eviscerated the angel guy, was smashing me up against the wall with what felt like a tree trunk.

I tried to fight, but only one of my legs and a wing was free. They kicked and flapped uselessly while the blood rushed in my ears and filled my head too full and my chest screamed for air.

“Angelpunk!” Cherie ran toward me.

She didn’t know she was supposed to run away. The guys fight so the girls can run and find a safe place to hide. That was how it was supposed to go. The angels here just didn’t know that.

The swinging gold door to safety was right there behind her, and she ran toward me.

The god with the knife scooped her up. I tried to scream at it, but I didn’t have any air to make a sound. The night was catching up to me, darkness creeping in, but I fought harder. I had to protect her. I got the other wing free, but it wouldn’t flap right. The bones in it were crushed.

The god with the tree trunk leaned its weight on me until I couldn’t move at all.

The god with the knife turned Cherie upside down, holding her one-handed by both feet. Her beautiful white wings fell over her head, just like the upside-down golden angels, and that wavy white hair trailed down.

Her dark eyes were wide, surprised. She reached for me. Her mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying anymore.

The god’s knife raised. It was getting so dark. So hard to see. I could just barely make out the whitest parts of Cherie—the feathers, the hair, the eyelashes.

Until the blood started pouring from her throat, down her shocked face, and soaking it all black.