Thunder Road (Rain Chaser Book 1) (7 page)

Okay…maybe it did a little.

I continued to investigate the damage, gently inspecting a crimson nick on his temple. Then I spotted another wound, this one below his lip. He seemed to feel the weight of my gaze, because as I moved my hand once more, guided by something that defied logic or reasoning, he grabbed my wrist and eased it back down to the mattress. His grip was light but firm, telling me I was finished with my little exploration.

My cheeks warmed. What the hell had that been? One minute I was in agony, the next I was thinking of touching his mouth.

A mouth that was now turned downwards in its typical
back off
frown.

I must have taken a pretty serious knock to the head. That was the only way to explain it.

He inched closer, and my pulse sped up. I was almost never allowed the opportunity to be in such close proximity with a man. All attempts I’d made to date in my late teens and early twenties had been severely quashed by the higher-ups at the temple.

Clerics were meant to be virgins.

And failing that—which I had, spectacularly—we were to give the impression of a celibate life.

By the time I turned twenty-five I’d all but given up on finding someone, even a body to warm the space at my side for one night. It wasn’t worth the headache it caused back home. Inevitably there would be a BuzzFeed post or clickbait article about some guy’s evening with a Rain Chaser.

They never got tired of using jokes about “A spark between us.”

A night of barely decent sex didn’t balance out a five-hour lecture from Sido about the way my actions impacted Seth and his tithes.

So the celibate life it was.

Cade’s nearness and warmth and inescapable
maleness
were starting to make me dizzy. Did he have to be so big and have those tattoos and smell like leather and pine? Good gods, it wasn’t a fair thing to do to a lady with a concussion.

“Hold still.” Was it my imagination or did his voice sound a little tense?

His hand looped around the back of my neck, rough fingers tracing my birthmark. He tugged me towards him, and though he didn’t force the motion, the unspoken power of his arms made me go willingly. With his other hand he pushed my hair over my shoulder so it was all in front of me, leaving my neck and back exposed.

I concentrated on my breathing, focusing on his arms instead of his face, which I could not bring myself to look at, fearing the redness of my cheeks would give away all the dangerous paths my mind was wandering down.

I’d never seen his tattoos like this before, uncovered and there for the reading. There were so many they merged together into one colorful, beautiful piece, making it hard to pick apart the individual elements. The longer I stared, though, the more I was able to see. Here, a small black rose, there a bird with a wing covering its head. The pieces did not seem to have any connection to each other, yet side by side they made sense. A collection of short stories combined into one book. Independent of one another yet still comfortable in the same binding.

A green four-leaf clover caught my eye. One leaf was marked with a black skull.

I swallowed hard at this bitter reminder of who Cade was and what he did.

I touched the clover, and his jaw tensed, but he continued what he was doing. Once my hair was out of the way, he picked up the damp washcloth and pressed it to the back of my neck.

Sucking in a breath through my teeth, I gripped his wrist
hard
. Each forked line of the scars on my back sang out in a chorus of pain. I could feel them all individually, the heat from the damp cloth radiating down my spine. I shut my eyes and let out a growl.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “This was easier when you were out.”

“Yeah, I tend to complain less when I’m unconscious.”

He gave a rough chuckle and carried on dabbing at my back. When he pulled the cloth away, it was pink with blood.

“Wow.” I stared at the small square of fabric, then couldn’t resist the pull of my own curiosity. Ignoring my body’s protestations, I let go of Cade’s arm and squirmed away from him. I went into the bathroom, where the sink was splattered with more diluted blood. My jacket was draped across the toilet, and there were smears of blood across the floor. None of it was excessive, more like a kid getting overzealous with pink watercolors.

Cade walked in behind me just as I was lifting the hem of my tank top.

Part of me wanted to tell him to turn around and give me privacy, but considering the state of the room, I suspected he’d already seen what I was hiding under my shirt. I pulled up the tank, careful to expose only the back and part of my midriff, but keeping my chest covered. I was wearing a bra, but I still didn’t feel like flashing him the goods.

Once my top was up, he looked away but remained in the room, the washcloth balled in his hand. I twisted my neck to look over my shoulder, and what I saw made me gasp. The often-present Lichtenberg figures, which had merely been red earlier, appeared as if they had burst. They were deep vermillion, angry red forks of lightning spreading from both shoulders and down my spine. Fine lines traced my shoulders and upper arms, and one bold scar had come across the front to my collarbone. The lines disappeared down the waist of my jeans, and throbbing pain told me they extended down to my tailbone.

The worst of them were weeping diluted blood, which was what Cade had been tending to while I was passed out.

“I guess that’s never happened before?”

I hadn’t gotten around to answering his original question about how much I remembered. But I certainly had my full memories of Seth, and how he’d wielded me like a weapon. “Never.”

“I used a little peroxide on them, but they don’t look too deep. Some of the marks were old.”

I nodded, still staring at myself in the mirror. My back looked like a tapestry of broken glass. “I had some from earlier tonight. And a few from the week before.” Normally they faded out completely in two weeks’ time, but this time I’d pushed myself too far. I wasn’t sure if some of these were going to heal entirely.

“Tallulah…” I caught his reflection staring at me.

I lowered my shirt slowly, trying not to irritate the open wounds he’d spent so much time cleaning.

“Thank you.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear whatever it was he was building up to, because the look on his face was much more serious than I would have liked it to be.

“Come sit down.” He wasn’t asking. This was a command through and through, and I wanted to tell him where he could put his orders, but I was feeling lightheaded.

He remained in the doorway, meaning I had to brush against him as I passed. Cade closed his eyes and breathed in sharply through his nose, then followed me back to the bed where I sat down, trying to soothe my aching head.

I shut my eyes to keep the room from spinning. When I opened them again, Cade was crouched in front of me so we were eye to eye.

“Tallulah,” he said my name again, forcing me to keep my focus on him. “What happened back there?”

“Hey, I’m the one that blacked out.” I smiled, pretending I wasn’t freaking out. “I thought you were supposed to tell
me
what I missed.”

“You annihilated twenty-thousand square feet of real estate. In one shot.”

My attention returned to the cuts on his face. “I hurt you.”

Cade shook his head. “I’m not worried about me.”

He could say that all he wanted, but the truth was my power had done something to hurt him. That wasn’t okay. I was supposed to have enough control to do this sort of thing without any collateral damage.

“Seth.” The name was all I had by means of explanation. I sighed and tried not to focus on the acute pain on my back and in my head, but it was hard to think of anything else when everything hurt so much.

Fen, who had stayed out of the way until now, hopped back onto the bed, paced the length of the mattress a half-dozen times making worried trilling noises, then curled into a ball beside me.

“He bit me about fifteen times when I cleaning your back.” Cade held up his hands to show me the tiny needle-sized bite marks on his knuckles. “He cares about you.”

“You bribed him.” I nodded to the full food dish.

“Fastest way to a man’s heart. No matter what the species.”

As if agreeing, Fen let out a little snort, his gaze laser focused on Cade. I scratched my furry sidekick behind his massive ears, and he gave a contented sigh. Soon he was snoring.

There was no escaping an explanation. Cade was still patiently crouched in front of me, oblivious to whatever strain it must be putting on his knees, and he showed no sign of going away or being distracted by my banter.

Not that I was on top of my chitchat game right now.

“He’s never done that before,” I admitted. “Not like that. Normally I… Normally what I get is like a shadow of his ability. I can call the rain, summon the lightning, but I can’t, like, create a tornado from nothing. And I can’t decimate a building in one go.”

“Well, you did.”

I nodded. “Evidently.”

All I was thinking was what would have happened if I’d been weaker. The feel of Seth’s power inside me was like being ripped to shreds by white-hot light. It was such a foreign, intense pain, my body was already starting to forget it. Anything short of physical denial would be too much to handle. But his power had split my skin, spilled my blood.

He could have killed me.

And if he had, he wouldn’t have cared.

“Are you okay?” He put one hand on my knee, and I stared at the clover tattoo.

“What does that mean?” I touched it, and this time he didn’t move my hand away.

“You’re not the only one who gets used by your god, you know.”

My finger traced the black outline of the skull. “It’s not your fault.” I wasn’t sure what I was absolving him of, but that tiny little death mark told me it wasn’t anything he would reflect upon happily. “We don’t get to say no to this. None of it.”

This time he pulled his sleeves down, and I let my hand drop away.

“A lot of people have died because of me,” he said. “I’m not going to let you be another one.”

As if he had a say in it.

“They’re all for people you…” I let my voice drift off.
Killed
wasn’t the right word. But he was right, bad luck was a factor in many, many deaths. “All of them are for someone different?”

He clenched his jaw and stood. “Yes.”

There were so many. My gaze followed him up, watching him as he stalked around the room with the fevered grace of a caged animal. I decided not to ask him anything else about it. When he grabbed my bag and started filling it with my things, I was distracted enough to change the topic.

“What are you doing?”

“Packing.”

I made a face of annoyance, but he was too busy collecting my jacket from the bathroom to see it. When he threw my coat at me, I had enough wherewithal to catch it one-handed. Fen lifted his head and watched with me as Cade prowled from one area to the next.

“What are you
doing
? I asked again.

“If we’re going to get to Louisiana before Manea’s undead horde, we need to leave. Now. Unlike us, they don’t need sleep.”

“You’re actually coming?” I knew Seth had said arrangements were already in order, but I honestly hadn’t expected Cade would be making this fool’s errand by my side.

He gave me a funny look. “Like I’d make you do this by yourself?”

Anyone else would have.

What did it say about me that the only person lining up to help me was the right-hand man to Bad Luck herself?

Chapter Nine

We had two cars, and neither of us could agree who would drive.

Taking both was stupid, as we would be able to double our miles if we traded off on driving shifts, but each of us was stubborn to the core and hated the idea of leaving our trusted mount behind.

Finally, he bested me with logic by pointing out that I still needed time to recuperate, and if he was going to be doing most of the driving, we ought to do it in his car.

I made arrangements with the temple to have someone collect my Mustang, but I wasn’t happy about it. If I didn’t have my car, it felt like I was giving up some of my control over the situation, making it less
my
job and more his. I didn’t like it. Control was important to me. It was the one thing I had that kept me from feeling like I was a pawn in someone else’s chess game.

Whitefish was practically on the Canadian border, so the sun was already fully risen and beating down on us mercilessly by the time we drove through Missoula and I insisted we stop for breakfast. The crushing pain of the previous night’s events had dulled, only to be replaced with a hunger unlike anything I’d ever felt before.

Hangry
was the word people used to describe hunger that made people cranky.

If there was a word for being an empty, bottomless pit in need of sustenance who would murder anything in her path to get to a large stack of pancakes, that was me. I was a veritable black hole.

We stopped at the first Denny’s we could find, and Cade ordered a black coffee while I asked for pancakes, waffles, bacon, sausage, eggs, hash browns and a vanilla milkshake. “As fast as humanly possible.” My hands were shaking from lowered blood sugar, and if I didn’t get food soon, I’d start drinking from the syrup bottle.

“I was the same way when I was expecting my first,” our waitress said, giving Cade a knowing wink. “A real bear.”

I didn’t get a chance to correct her as she left to put in our order.

Cade had the good grace to wait until she was gone before he let out a snort of laughter. “Congrats.”

“Do I
look
pregnant?” I demanded. I glanced down at my belly to be sure, but nope, still skinny. I’d probably be
too
skinny if not for the muscle I had managed to accumulate. Instead I just looked like a runner.

Cade gave me a once-over, and I was suddenly very aware of his gaze lingering on me when he said, “You do not.”

We still had another six states to drive through. If the past twenty-four hours was any indication, we would either murder each other or fuck each other stupid before this trip was done. I honestly wasn’t sure which of those two options was more dangerous.