Thunder Road (Rain Chaser Book 1) (15 page)

Hecate held her hand out to me, and I hesitated only briefly before taking it. At this point I was in her domain anyway. She could leave me here if she wanted, and I could imagine very little that would be worse than that.

“I want to show you something.”

We walked, and the road seemed to move the opposite way, ushering us forward at incredible speed. The trees were a blur beside us, until they slowed and stopped, and we found ourselves standing at a five-point crossroads.

“Welcome to the end of the night road. This is something not many living souls have seen before.”

“Is that because they all end up dead afterwards?” I sounded wary, not entirely sure I wanted to hear her answer.

“Some. But for the most part this is not meant for mortal eyes. This is where the spirits determine which way their final journey will lead them.”

My skin went cold in spite of the stifling air. “This isn’t the crossroads you were telling me about?”

“No. I told you that would be symbolic. This one is very real, and you have a long way to go on your current journey before you will find yourself here.”

I let my breath out all at once, bracing my trembling hands on my thighs. I hadn’t realized until right then how much I wasn’t ready to die. I liked to talk a big game, pretending I could deal with the consequences of Manea’s threat, but the truth was I was pretty fond of living and didn’t want to give that up yet.

“So what does this have to do with Leo Marquette?” Might as well bring this discussion back to the information she’d promised me. The sooner I got out of here the better.

“Leo Marquette has been at this crossroad.”

My head spun. I needed to sit down. I needed a glass of water. Gods, I needed a vacation. “
What
?”

“Yes, he has stood where you are now, and he made the choice very few think to consider. He asked to go back.”

“I didn’t think demigods walked the night road.”

“The rules of their mortal half still apply. They have expiration dates, and when those come, they find themselves under my watchful eye.” She smiled at me, and icy fingers of fear tickled my spine. Now more than ever I wanted to get out of here and not come back until I really was dead.

“He’s a man then?”

“A man?” Hecate seemed confused by my word choice. “A human? A male? You must know the answer to these questions already. I believe you know he’s Seth’s son.”

“Yes, but Seth called him a child. Is he an adult? I need to know who I’m looking for.”

“He is grown, as you are.” She was amused by this question. “Would you like to see him?”

“Uh,
yes
.”

But I wanted to know more. How had Leo come here? Was that how Manea knew about him and why she was targeting Leo instead of some of Seth’s other children? If I wanted to hurt Seth, going after Sido would have been my choice. If Leo had died, even briefly, that meant Manea had gotten her hands on him once. Maybe finishing the job was what it would take to really stick it to the storm god.

I killed your son twice, and you did nothing
.

It was spiteful, but effectively cruel. Exactly the sort of thing a goddess would dream up.

“How did he die?”

Hecate held up her wrists, and lines sliced open along the veins, blood rushing from the illusory wounds and puddling the ground around her feet with red droplets that resembled fresh poppies. The dark spots at the center of each drop grew legs and transformed into beetles, scuttling away from her feet as fast as they could.

“He killed himself.” I didn’t phrase it as a question.

“Yes. And then he changed his mind.”

“I didn’t think that was allowed.”

“As with most things, how do you know unless you ask? Leo asked.”

“And you just let him go?”

“Not
just
. Do you imagine I am in the business of restoring mortal lives for free? If so, you have very naïve views.”

“I don’t think you do anything for free.”

“Cynical, but slightly more accurate.” The gaping wounds on her arms healed as quickly as they’d formed. One of the blood beetles skittered across my foot in its hurry to get away. I wasn’t sure what had the newborn bugs so scared, but I admired their survival instinct.

Too bad they were living in a place where only the dead could walk.

“What did you make him offer?”

Hecate laughed, and if I could have turned into a beetle and scurried away from the sound, I would have. She clapped me on the shoulder, chuckling like she thought I’d made the funniest joke she’d ever heard. She shook her head, and each turn of the cheek changed how she looked. Young, old, normal. Young, old, normal.

Did I mention I needed a vacation?

“I’m not going to divulge my arrangements with Leo Marquette to you. What is said between me and the dead is not for the ears of others.”

“And what about the things said between you and the living?”

She gave my arm a tender squeeze. “I won’t tell Seth about our arrangement, if that’s what has you worried. But I was not the only one in the room.”

I doubted Mormo would get any benefits from tattling on me, especially not given his devotion to Hecate. Cade…well…his life was no more his own than mine was. He wouldn’t want to rat me out, but if Ardra asked, he couldn’t lie to her.

Then again, what were the chances of the bad-luck goddess asking, “Did Tallulah make any binding promises to gods other than Seth?”

I was probably okay.

“Show me.” I tried to be subtle about shrugging free of her touch. She frowned anyway.

“Very well.”

Hecate pointed to the forks of the path. “The way is simple for those who can acknowledge the life they have lived. There is the path you are on.” She indicated the ground beneath our feet. “There is the path of the wicked. The path of the righteous. The path of the humble. The path of the wise.”

“And where do they go?” If the path of the wicked didn’t lead straight to the underworld, I’d be shocked.

“The journey is different for everyone who walks it, and thus so is the destination.” As if she’d read my mind, she said, “The underworld doesn’t need to be an awful place, little one. Not every eternity is an infernal one.”

“That’s your mystical, godlike way of saying you won’t tell me where they go.”

A light laugh. “Yes.”

“Well, if you ask me, the path of the humble is bullshit.”

Hecate raised one brow and regarded me with interest. She said nothing, but her expression clearly indicated she wanted me to continue.

“If someone was truly humble, they wouldn’t
call
themselves humble. It would be like bragging about how humble they are, and that would be counterintuitive.”

This made her smile brightly, and her adult visage was more beautiful than I’d ever seen her before. Arresting was the only correct word. Breathtaking.

“It is also the path of the liar. The self-deceiver,” Hecate explained.

“So nothing here is as it seems.”

“Everything is as it is. What it seems is merely a projection you have brought into it yourself.”

“Fucking riddles.”

Hecate took my hand and squeezed it, looking down each path. From this angle she appeared to be a child, and it was hard not to trust her just because of the innocent veneer.

“This is not a test or a trick. I want you to pick the path you would choose if you were standing here for real. And if you choose correctly, I will show you Leo.”

My gaze trailed over the options. I wasn’t truly wicked, and wouldn’t have chosen the path of the humble even if I hadn’t spotted the obvious fallacy in its name.

Righteousness or wisdom, then.

Did self-righteousness count? I’d been accused of that more than once. And no one had ever accused me of being terribly smart, in spite of my own opinions on the matter.

I was about to start a mental game of “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe” to pick a path when the answer came to me.

“No.”

Her grip tightened, and her hair fell over her shoulder, blocking my view of her face. The more she squeezed the more it began to hurt, until I yelped, wrenching my hand free.

“No isn’t an answer.”

“No
is
an answer.” I planted my feet firmly, worried she might try to force me to move. “You told me yourself it was what Leo chose, and if I expect to see him, I should take the same path he did, shouldn’t I?”

I totally deserved to take the path of the wise when I got here for real. No one else would be able to tell me differently.

The hag’s face turned a milky eye on me, her wrinkles creasing deeply as she furrowed her brow and sneered. Then the sneer softened, and Hecate faced me as the middle woman, easing the tension with a gentle smile. “I knew I’d made the right choice with you.”

“Great.”

“Now you have earned what you are looking for.”

Without further explanation she shoved me, both hands on my chest. I stumbled backward and went down, expecting to land on my ass on the ground. Instead I kept falling. The trees melted away into black streaks of nothingness, and the night road vanished, Hecate along with it. I fell and kept falling until I was sure this was the shape of eternity and I would pass the remainder of my days plummeting into an inky void that was the absence of anything.

Then came the smell of spice. Sharp, brilliant chilies and sweet sugar. Beneath it was a fetid reek of piss and vomit, but far enough away it was like an insinuation instead of an insult. Then I landed
hard
, thumping butt first down on rough wood floor panels. The room was dark, but compared to the void, it was downright luminous.

I made out the familiar shapes of furniture: a dresser, a bed.

In the distance, voices shouted merrily and music throbbed.

I wasn’t in my motel room in Shreveport. There was no sign of Cade, or Fen, and mercifully no sign of Mormo.

My head swam, and I tried to stand, but my body reeled, and a sudden wave of nausea crashed into me.

I bolted for the thin line of light on the floor, praying it was a bathroom.

Knocking open the door, I first struck a wall of steam, then smacked into a much more solid wall of warm skin and firm muscle.

Belonging to a
very
naked man.

Chapter Sixteen

No time for embarrassment or modesty.

I shoved past the man and found the toilet. Knocking his neatly folded clothes onto the floor, I lifted the lid and tossed my cookies. The retching sound apparently was enough to drive my new nude friend out of the room with a deep, “Oh fuck,
gross
.”

Yeah, well, he should be grateful I didn’t do it on his bedroom floor.

When my entire stomach and entrails felt like they’d been exhumed into the toilet, I slumped back onto the tile floor and glanced around the little bathroom. It was old and cramped, so we were probably in an apartment. The floor was white hexagonal tiles with intermittent black ones thrown in willy-nilly to make an obsessive-compulsive person nuts.

An ivy plant hung in a basket above the toilet, tendrils of leaves snaking out over the mirror and wrapping around the silver shower rod. Inside the tub were minimal toiletries and some men’s shampoo and body wash in aggressively masculine gray packaging.

The clothing on the floor next to me was a pair of jeans so well-worn there were holes underneath the back pockets, and a T-shirt in similar disrepair. Splatters of drywall mud and paint were the only things that made me think
tradesman
instead of
pretentious hipster
.

Outside the door, he cleared his throat loudly.

“Lady, are you done yakking in my john?”

I glared at the toilet like it was my sworn enemy. “For now.”

He pushed open the door, and his body filled the frame—still mostly naked, but for a pair of boxer briefs—and his presence loomed large in the room.

Really large, judging by the underwear.

“Put that thing away,” I grumbled, throwing his jeans at him.

Gods knew why, but he complied, pulling the pants on hurriedly but not bothering to do up the zipper or button. Whatever, I suppose it
was
his place. I took a look at him without the distraction of his mighty package being so close to escaping. He was tall, pushing six-foot-five or more, though it was hard to know for sure given that I was on the floor.

His skin was light brown, with a similar rosy glow to Sido’s. He also had her same tight curls, though his were cut a fair bit shorter. His eyes surprised me though, a light gray, the color of a passing storm.

The same color Seth’s eyes turned when he was pleased about something.

“Well I’ll be. You’re Leo Marquette, aren’t you?”

“Maybe. Depends who you are and why you broke into my apartment.” He had a wonderful New Orleans accent that was charming and inviting even when he was grilling me about my inadvertent B&E.

“I didn’t break in.”

“Sure, you just materialized here.” He rolled his eyes.

“Actually…”

“Look, lady, if you’re gonna come in here, force me to put on pants, and ralph all over my bathroom, I think I deserve some kind of an explanation.”

I smiled in spite of my attempt to remain serious. How could anyone stay tough when that accent was so delightful? “I did
not
throw up all over your bathroom. I kept it very centralized.” I waved my hand in the area over the toilet. “And I’d like to see you manage to keep your shit together when you get dropped off the godsdamned night road unexpectedly.”

The night-road mention got his attention. Leo’s expression changed from mildly annoyed to downright terrified in a heartbeat. His skin took on an ashen quality, and he checked over his shoulder, like I might have brought Hecate with me.

“I’m alone,” I assured him.

“What do you want?” He shut the door behind him, closing us into the bathroom together. With no easy route of escape and him edging closer, I became distinctly aware of how imposing his size was and how much damage he could do if he wanted to.

He was a demigod, after all. They were stronger than humans and weren’t always known to have the most evenly keeled temperaments.