Thunder Road (Rain Chaser Book 1) (21 page)

The world was fading fast, and so too were all my earthly worries.

“Leo…” I had the vague sensation of him coming closer, and then there was new, strong pressure on the knife wound. I winced and choked back another bout of coughing long enough to say, “Don’t trust anyone.”

He laughed humorlessly. “How about you pull through this, and then you can tell me who to trust, okay?”

“Cade. Trust Cade.” If there was anyone alive outside of the temple who could bring Leo in safely, it would be Cade. Bad luck be damned.

“Shut up, okay?”

“Not…the boss…of me.”

“No, but apparently my dad is.”

Sure, before he didn’t want to acknowledge it, and now he was using the fact against me. Whatever, I was too tired to fight anymore.

I closed my eyes and followed the light.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Warm sunlight kissed my skin.

I opened one eye a sliver, then the other, and lay still, basking in the glow of daylight. Nothing hurt, and there was no blood on me when I lifted my hands and looked them over. Everything was fine.

So, surely I was dead, right?

Instead of panic or sadness, I just stayed there, drinking in the perfection of a sunny day. Most of my life had been cast in shadow and rain, forever trailing the storm. Blue-skied summer days were as rare as a four-leaf clover for me.

Whatever this was, I wanted to enjoy it a few minutes longer before admitting to myself what it meant.

I didn’t get that.

Sunny leaned over me, her perfect blonde hair falling over one shoulder in waves, the color of wheat and honey. Her skin was tan, cheeks aglow with a peachy rose shade that made her look like she’d been running. Her beautiful features were set into an expression of concern that was so intense it bordered on anger.

I expected her to be smiling. If this was my passage to the afterlife, surely she’d be smiling.

Something about this whole situation was wrong, but I couldn’t put into words what was bothering me.

“Lu?” She touched my cheek, her skin soft and hot. I leaned into her hand and closed my eyes, smiling to myself. How long had it been since we’d been together? Years. Years and thousands of miles divided us, yet I could remember the exact smell of her—sundried linen and flowers—and it felt as if no time had passed at all.

I opened my eyes again and took her in. Sunny was my opposite in every feasible way. She was tan, blonde, and elegant, and looked like our mother. Or what I dimly recalled our mother to look like. I took after our father, all darkness to Sunny’s light.

My perfect sister.

I knew without needing to see it she bore a mark in the shape of the sun on the back of her neck, exactly where my storm cloud was.

We were an anomaly, a never-before-seen aberration: twins who were both chosen to serve, but each destined for a different god.

I went to Seth. Sunny went to Apollo. And twenty years went by where we passed each other like ships in the night, always apart but never really leaving each other.

How do you give up one half of your soul?

It’s a hole that never fully heals, especially if you don’t want it to.

Taking her hand in mine, I squeezed, holding our linked fingers close to my heart. “I knew I’d see you before I died.”

“Lu, you’re not dead.” She lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles, brushing hair away from my cheeks. “And you need to wake up.”

Was it a dream? Had any dream ever been this real? The smell of her, the way her hand felt in mine. I felt so full of love I thought I might burst at the seams. For most of my adult life I’d been wandering around as an incomplete person, and now that I felt whole again, she was telling me it wasn’t real.

I couldn’t accept that.

Yet that nagging feeling of wrongness returned, only this time I could see things a bit more clearly. Of course I wasn’t dead, that was the whole point of the bracelet, wasn’t it? And if I was dead, I wouldn’t be basking in the sunlight with my sister. I’d be walking the night road with Hecate, and she’d probably be pissed off I hadn’t stayed alive long enough to fulfill her favor.

Now that I was really thinking about it, I’d been an idiot to think this was some perfect afterlife, welcoming me in with open arms.

For one thing, that would mean Sunny was dead as well, and that was
not
how I wanted to reunite with my twin. I’d prefer to never see her again than to be the reason she died young and pretty.

“I’m dreaming.”

Sunny nodded, stroking my hair, her thumb rubbing circles on my knuckles. When we were younger, before they separated us and took us to our respective temples, we would vanish for hours, hiding from our parents for no other reason than that we could. We’d hide together in closets or under the deck at the back of our house. We’d emerge covered in mud or dust, and somehow the blame would always fall on me.

I was the dark sister. I was the black sheep.

Sunny was the embodiment of flawlessness.

I couldn’t be mad at her about it either, because I worshipped the ground she walked on. Even at a young age, when I was angry about my future and told them I wouldn’t go to the temple and I’d run away, Sunny was the voice of reason. She was the only thing that kept me sane.

So it was funny, now, to see her when I was evidently going crazy.

“You’re not real.” A single tear streaked down to my ear, and I tried to look away from her, not wanting to see her if she wasn’t actually with me. If this was a cruel byproduct of Mormo’s blade, it was worse than the pain. The hurt I’d feel when she vanished would eclipse anything the knife had left behind.

“I’m real enough.”

I fought back more tears, blinking fiercely. “I wish you were here, Sun. You’d know what to do.”

She was the smart one, the levelheaded one. If Sunny had been tasked with bringing Leo to the temple, he’d already be there, and things wouldn’t be such a mess. I was the fuckup, and now I was proving it yet again.

“Since when were you such a quitter, Tallulah Belle? You have a job to do.”

“I got
stabbed
.”

“You think Seth cares?”

A little bubble of laughter escaped my throat. “No.”

“You think Seth will accept any excuse?”

I shook my head, closing my eyes. A dull ache was building in my chest, my lungs burning with each new breath. “It’s not an excuse.”

“Wake up and finish what you started.” She gave my hands one more squeeze, so tight the small bones of my hand seemed to grind together, and I grimaced. “Wake up.”

“Wake up.” Her voice changed, deepening, becoming more commanding, more masculine. “Tallulah, come on, this isn’t my apartment. I can’t explain a dead body to the owners.”

Leo’s hand was pressed hard against my ribs, blood oozing up between his fingers, coating his skin with a film of deep crimson liquid.

“Ow,” I groaned.

“Hey, there you are.” He touched my face, giving my cheek a firm slap when I started to close my eyes again. “Nope, you’re stuck with me now.”

“Where’s Mormo?” I twisted, trying to look behind me to where I’d last seen the god. The hall was empty, and the front door of the apartment was wide open. To my relief, I noted the Keres had stopped their incessant whispering. All that was left was the sound of my own labored breathing and the muffled din of the French Quarter outside.

“Gone. Like
poof
gone. Do you ever get used to that?”

“Yeah.”

“I need to get you to a hospital.” He pressed down on my ribs harder, and I scowled. Was he intentionally trying to make this more painful, because if so, he was doing a bang-up job.

“Okay.”

Leo paused. “I sort of thought you might argue about it.”

“No. Hospitals have blood. I’ve lost a lot of that.” I held up my red hand to prove it to him. “I’d like to get some back, even if it’s not mine. I’m not picky.”

Too many words. Woozy.

I closed my eyes, and he slapped me again. “I’m not an expert or anything, but I think if you go to sleep, there’s a chance you’ll die.”

“Tired.”

“Yeah, well, no offense, but that’s not the kind of sleep you should be having right about now. Do you think you can put your hand on this?” He took hold of my hand and pressed it against my ribs.

I made a small whimpering noise but pushed down, keeping the wound closed as best I could. Leo lifted my head and wrapped his arm behind my shoulders, then hooked his other arm underneath my knees. Without so much as a grunt of effort, he picked me up easily from the floor.

“
Fuck
.” I buried my face in the crook of his arm, cursing a string of never-before-heard swears. If I thought holding the wound was bad, it was nothing compared to the pain of being hoisted up with a huge hole between your ribs.

“Sorry.” He even sounded a bit contrite. “Just please don’t die, okay? I’m pretty sure if my dad is who you say he is, he’ll kill me for it.”

Shows what he knew.

I passed out before we hit the main floor, regaining consciousness only briefly in little snippets, enough to see streetlights passing through a car window, and then the bright fluorescent bulbs that indicated a sterile space.

If this was what the afterlife looked like, I think I preferred the version in my dream.

Chapter Twenty-Three

When I came to, I was freezing.

I blinked against the harsh light from the overhead bulbs but found no reprieve when I rolled onto my side. Sunlight was blazing through a nearby window. Tubes and needles I hadn’t noticed before tugged at my arm when I moved. Guiltily I returned to my original position.

A machine next to me sounded out a steady rhythm:
beep, beep, beep, you’re alive
. I raised my arm to cover my eyes from the brightness, and the tubes made the small motion an effort. Grabbing a fistful of the plastic lines, I started yanking them only to have my desperate action abruptly stopped.

Strong hands eased my fingers off the medical equipment, and a lovely, deep, familiar voice said, “Nope.”

I turned my face and let out a small gasp of relief, tears springing to my eyes unexpectedly.

“Cade,” I breathed.

He released my hands and settled back into the chair next to my bed. I took a quick account of the room, confirming I was in a hospital. The area around me was Spartan and clean. I wore a flimsy hospital gown, and a thin blanket was tucked in around me, providing very little in the way of warmth.

I had apparently warranted my own private room, however, because I was alone with Cade. No sign of Leo.

I took hold of his hand back before he could hide it from me, squeezing it tight as if to confirm for myself he was really here. The pain in my ribs should have been enough to prove this was real and not a dream, but I wanted to feel the rough skin of his palm under my fingertips.

He looked exhausted, with purple circles under his eyes and several days’ worth of stubble darkening his cheeks. But with his eyes on me, his gloom seemed to be held at bay, because when he smiled, even the slight gesture held real warmth.

“How about you don’t do that again, deal?” he whispered, squeezing my hand.

He rested his other hand on my thigh, absently stroking up and down.

“Which part?” My eyes fluttered shut briefly, and I pretended we weren’t in this room and I’d never left that motel in Shreveport. Things would be so different if I hadn’t made the choices I’d made that night.

Gods, had that only been yesterday? I’d lived a thousand lives since then.

“The part where you make deals with Hecate. Or where you get stabbed.” When I opened my eyes, he was staring at me. “The part where you leave me.”

“Okay. Deal.”

Cade freed his hand from mine, and I let it go but mourned its absence. He stroked my hair back from my face, tucking loose strands behind my ears and smoothing my bangs off my forehead. “I mean, I wasn’t really worried. I know you’re tough. But Fenrir wouldn’t believe a word I said. That runt has trust issues.”

His grin was so perfect it hurt me to look right at him. I used to think he had the kind of face that was only handsome when he was serious. Seeing him now, smiling, I knew how wrong I’d been.

I touched his cheek, tracing the fading scars where I’d hurt him in the blast from the hotel explosion. “Bet you didn’t know what you were getting yourself into when you agreed to come on this little trip.” Every word hurt more than the last, reminding me why I was in this room to begin with.

“I had a pretty good idea that you and I might stir up some trouble.”

Speaking of trouble... “Where’s Le—”

I coughed trying to say his name, which turned into more coughing, and I doubled over in the bed, tears blurring my vision as I tried to get my breath back, but it seemed like it was always just escaping me.

Cade vanished from my side, and I wanted to call to him, but I couldn’t make the words come out.

He returned moments later with a doctor and nurse in tow. Their uniforms bore the symbol of Asclepius, a snake wrapped around a rod. Asclepius was one of the rare gods who did not have a chosen earthly representative. People chose to serve him and wore his mark willingly. It made me trust doctors and nurses all the more for it, because they weren’t forced to help people, they chose to. Asclepius must have been quite the benevolent deity to inspire such worship.

Of course, he was one of the few that handed the power of life and death directly to his followers.

The nurse was a middle-aged Asian woman with streaks of silver hair trailing into her ponytail. She was all business, straightening me out in bed and rattling off some information to the doctor as she checked the tubes in my arms to make sure I hadn’t pulled anything loose.

The doctor, leaving my immediate well-being in the capable hands of the nurse—her nametag said Rosemary—came to stand next to me. He was handsome in an authority-figure way, serious and businesslike. His red hair was wavy, and he wore dark-framed glasses that loaned his youngish face a bit more gravitas. The stitching on his lab coat above Asclepius’s mark said Dr. Shea.