Thunder Road (Rain Chaser Book 1) (6 page)

“
I bedded his mother in Louisiana a few years ago. I imagine they’re still there
.”

Some favorite this Leo kid was if Seth didn’t even know where he lived. What was I supposed to do, go through all the schools and daycares in Louisiana and ask, “Pardon me, do you have any children named Leo who exhibit demigod tendencies?”

I restrained myself from sighing. I’d have plenty of bitching to get out of my system as soon as he was gone, though.

“Do you remember her name?” I hoped he wouldn’t take offense to this question. Honestly, I was just hoping he could give me a little something more to go on than
Leo
.

“
Jacqueline. Jacqueline Marquette
.”

All right, that was a start. If only a few years had passed, Jacqueline and the child probably hadn’t moved anywhere. I would haul ass down to Louisiana before Prescott or any of Manea’s other goons got wind of where the boy was. That she’d be willing to kill a child to punish Seth wasn’t surprising per se, but it wasn’t how things should be done. The kid’s only crime was having the bad luck of being sired by a god. Should he die for that?

No.

Granted, Seth had said Manea wanted to
take
the child, not kill him. But she was the goddess of death. It didn’t take much of a logical leap to assume she would punish Seth by
taking
the child’s life.

This could have all ended if Seth was simply willing to return the idol I’d won from Manea, but his pride and his greed outweighed everything else. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place once again, knowing I was on my own when it came to protecting Leo.

“
You will accompany her
.” This Seth said directly to Cade, surprising us both.

I jumped away from Cade self-consciously, hoping to keep him out of it. If I could wave my hands and shout
Nothing to see here
in order to get Cade free of this situation unscathed, I would. But inattention didn’t mean Seth was actually oblivious. His focus was set on the man behind me, and there was nothing I could do to deter him now, so I watched as they made eye contact.

“Pardon?” Cade was looking directly at Seth with a ponderous, if somewhat irritated expression on his face.

I understood why he was annoyed. Seth was not his liege god. Whereas most other humans were at the whims and fancy of
all
gods, those of us chosen to serve were just beholden to our own. Technically Seth couldn’t command Cade to do anything, Cade only answered to Ardra.

“
You will accompany her
.” Seth’s tone seemed to ask,
Are you simple, boy
?

Cade’s jaw tightened again, only this time Seth could see it happen. I reached over, wrapping my hand around Cade’s wrist. I gave him a firm squeeze, hoping we could keep each other from making too big a mess of this.

“I answer to the goddess Ardra.”

“
I have asked for Ardra’s assistance. You will go. She has agreed.
”

If it were me in this situation, I would nod politely and then confirm with my temple after the fact. Cade and I must have been on the same wavelength because he gave a slight nod and said, “If the goddess wills it, so it will be done.”

It wouldn’t be that cut and dry, but Cade and I would have our own discussion about it once Seth was gone.

“
Bring me the boy. Don’t let anything happen to him.
”

He didn’t add an
or else
, but I heard one all the same.

The rain had settled into a soft drizzle, enough to dampen my face and create a smoky effect around the light posts. Seth, who evidently thought our business was concluded, began to walk away, ready to fade back into the mist.

The sound of a door lock engaging behind me returned me to the here and now and reminded me why Cade and I had come here in the first place.

“
Seth
,” I shouted.

Cade stiffened. I hadn’t realized he’d relaxed until the calmness left him. He apparently thought our interaction with the storm god was over as well.

“
Yes?
”

“We came here tonight to do a task for Ardra. If you want Cade to help me find Leo, it would go a long way with Ardra if you helped with her task personally.”

This, admittedly, was a bit selfish of me. But if we were going to bring down the house, I’d much rather Seth be the one to throw the lightning instead of me. It didn’t drain his energy in the slightest.

“Tallulah…” Cade began, but didn’t get further than my name.

“
You want me to dirty my hands with human concerns?
”

“I want you to show Ardra that her goodwill in letting Cade accompany me won’t be unappreciated.”

This was dangerous territory. If he was still in an ill humor, he might think I was being insolent instead of helpful. The truth was, I was thinking on my toes, and insolence was sort of my default setting.

What can I say? I was born difficult.

He chewed on this thought for a moment, then walked back towards us, the thin sheets of rain parting around him as he moved so it appeared like he was approaching through a shimmering tunnel of mist.

The effect was impressive.

“
Fetch the mortal
.” He waved his hand dismissively at the door. “
I’m not here to do Manea’s bidding
.”

I swallowed hard, realizing the only reason he was giving the man inside a chance to escape was that killing him would benefit the death goddess. Any other time he probably would have leveled the resort without a second thought towards the life inside.

After dashing quickly to the front door, I hammered on the glass pane until a pale, round face appeared. The man was in his late sixties, with thinning brown hair going gray around the temples and small blue eyes currently full of fear.

“Unlock the door,” I demanded.

“No.” His voice was muffled, but I managed to hear the rude tone all the same.

Man, no one appreciated a good life-saving effort these days.

“This building is coming down whether or not you come out.” I gave him a serious look so he would understand I wasn’t bluffing. “Unlock the door and get out, or stay in there and hope you aren’t crushed under a beam. Do whatever you want, I’m not going to fight you.”

I stood back, crossing my arms. In a different scenario I might have shown more patience or tried harder to make him understand what was happening, but thanks to my nerves being run raw by the presence of Seth, I was in no mood for hand-holding. Someone here was going to feel the brunt of my annoyance, and the man inside the building was the most obvious target.

Overhead, the clouds had begun to churn again, and the rain was falling harder. Soon the raindrops took on a more menacing sound, and I looked down to see quarter-sized pellets of hail bouncing off the sidewalk by my feet.

“Last chance,” I warned. “Open the door and leave, or stay and die. I don’t care.”

“I’ll call the police!”

“Mortal law has no bearing here.” I almost laughed at the absurdity of his threat, but the situation was serious enough that I remained poker-faced. “The police can’t help you.”

“I won’t go.” Yet he didn’t move away from the door. For some reason this idiot thought I was bluffing.

“
Show him
,” Seth said.

Well, if the boss told me to, I guess I was going to put on a little display.

“Stand back,” I whispered to Cade. This might get messy, and the last thing I wanted was for him to get caught in the crossfire. He didn’t look thrilled about it but stepped away from me all the same.

My skin tingled. With Seth so close, I didn’t need to pull the power from the storm, I could take it straight from the source. It was like the difference between plugging a lamp into a portable charger or plugging it directly into a grid. If I wasn’t careful, it could actually overwhelm me, and that could have disastrous consequences.

Small hairs along my arms and the back of my neck stood up, and all the warmth I’d felt from my proximity to Cade was replaced with the cool, quicksilver feeling of Seth’s enormous power flowing into me and filling me up. I closed my eyes, letting the electricity flicker, touching every nerve and synapse in my body. I was a storm of lightning bugs. A meteor shower compressed into human form. I was too bright to be contained.

I screamed, the magnitude of the energy overpowering me. It was too much, too fast, and it needed an outlet
now
, or it would burn me up from the inside out.

I whipped my head around, and my attention fixed on the man’s car parked a few feet away. It was slicked wet with rain and glimmering faintly under the parking-lot lights. Electricity sparked on my skin, and I lifted my hands, which were glowing bright blue-white, and willed the energy out of me.

The lightning struck me then, a forked bolt straight from the sky that sliced through me easier than a hot knife in butter. The bolt followed the path of Seth’s energy and poured out through my hands, directly into the car.

Much like the sedans driven by Manea’s henchmen, the car in front of me exploded, sending a ball of flame and metal ten feet in the air before the shell of the former automobile fell back to earth halfway across the parking lot.

I turned back to the hotel, still radiating waves of pure, storm-borne power.

“
Get out now
,” I snarled.

This time the man didn’t argue. He opened the door and ran, never looking back. He passed the husk of his car and kept going until I could only see flashes of his white shirt in the night.

“
Good. Now we finish
.” Seth touched the mark at the back of my neck, and I felt as if I’d been punched by a fist made of thunder. My bones ground together, and I thought my brain might be exploding one particle at a time. He pushed his power through me, and though my mouth was open in a scream, I couldn’t hear any sound.

The sensation of it was somewhere between the worst pain I’d ever felt and what I imagined pure bliss to be. It confused my senses so thoroughly I didn’t know how to react. He’d never used me as a conduit before, not like this.

Lightning struck me a second time and poured out of my hands once more, flowing into the resort. A chorus of bolts followed suit from the sky, crashing into different parts of the hotel.

Glass shattered and wood groaned as it splintered. The whole building sounded like it was howling in pain.

Or maybe that was me.

Seth released me, and I staggered. The hotel was in ruins, a smoldering heap of wood and debris. I’d brought it down in a minute flat.

“
We’re done here
.”

I waited, rooted to the spot until he had disappeared into the rain.

Then I fell, and the world went black before I even hit the ground.

Chapter Eight

Someone was licking me.

I woke up slowly, my body protesting with each minor shift or adjustment, every part of me demanding I just lie still and everything would be okay.

But I was being licked, and that required further investigation.

Opening first one eye, then the other, I found a pair of wide brown orbs staring back at me, a fawn-colored snout and huge ears completing the face.

“Go away, Fen,” I grumbled.

The fennec gave a short, barking sound, then began to lick me again, until I lifted my arm to push him away. He nipped at my fingers, enjoying this new game. My joints and muscles, on the other hand, hated me for every second of it.

At that point I paused, drinking the whole tableau in.

If Fenrir was here biting me, and I was lying down…

I sat bolt upright and looked at my surroundings. Back in the motel room, as I’d suspected. But how? The last thing I remembered was Seth using me as an amplifier for his power, and after that I was down for the count.

Cade stepped out of the bathroom, his jacket gone and his Henley sleeves pushed up to the elbows, giving me an uninterrupted view of his toned, tattooed forearms.

“You’re up.”

I ignored him, taking stock of the room and myself. My own jacket had been removed, as well as my boots and socks, but my pants and tank top were still in place. My hair was spilling down over my shoulders, so either I’d lost my ponytail holder in the events at the resort, or he’d taken it out for me.

The room itself was as disorderly as I’d left it, but I noticed Fen’s food dish had been refilled.

This might have been pure kindness, or it might have been to keep the fennec from annoying Cade to death by begging. Either way I was grateful to him for doing it. And for getting me here.

Cade was holding a washcloth, water dripping through his fingers onto the floor. He looked exhausted, and fine lines of worry had drawn his eyebrows into a deeper-than-usual scowl.

“What happened?” I tried to sit up, but my head screamed and my body felt as if it were being fueled by pure agony. Every gesture was torture, even speaking. My throat felt raw, each word like sandpaper scraping the inside of my lungs and throat. The best I could manage was to prop myself against the flat motel pillows, my head thumping lightly against the wooden headboard.

“How much do you remember?” he asked.

Without being invited, he approached the bed and sat next to me. The weight of his body made the mattress dip, and I leaned towards him as a result, my shoulder bumping his.

“I remember hitting the resort.”

A smirk toyed at the corner of his lips, then vanished. Only then did I spot the cuts on his cheek, throat, and over his eyebrow. They’d been cleaned and didn’t look too serious, but they were still fresh and raw.

Without stopping to think, I touched his face, my fingertips delicately grazing the red lines across his cheekbone. He flinched, and I froze in place, thinking he was about to pull away, but he merely sat there, his breath suddenly short, ragged. I traced the line of one cut, which was maybe two inches long and not too deep, and his eyes locked on mine, deep brown pools, the color of scotch on the rocks. Unlike with Seth, the intensity I saw in Cade’s expression didn’t frighten me.