by Sierra Dean
Another flash of lightning brightened the hilltop, only now it came from my hands instead of the sky. It sizzled past Prescott, ruffling his suit jacket and sending him sprawling backwards so fast he collapsed into the mud, scrambling to get away. The three undead guards also retreated, finally lowering their weapons. They might not be able to die, but Manea made sure they cared about self-preservation all the same.
The lightning hit the front car in an explosion of sparks and fire. The gas tank went up in flame, sending pieces of the sedan raining down all around us like sharp, metallic snow.
The husk of the car landed next to the still-functional one, and everyone stared at the burning ruin.
Smoke unfurled from my fingertips, and steam rose from my skin. I was breathing hard, and all I wanted right then was to eat five thousand calories and nap forever.
“Tell Manea if she wants the idol, she can get it from Seth.”
Pieces of the wreckage crumbled into the mud with a loud, grinding sound. The rumble of thunder had lessened, but the rain was still pounding down around us. I glared at Prescott, ignoring the three henchmen. I wanted him to acknowledge me, so I could drive off without having to look over my shoulder.
“This isn’t over.” His voice was surprisingly cool, given that he was slick with wet dirt and I’d almost blown him up.
I scoffed. “It never is.”
Chapter Two
Whitefish, Montana, was like most of the small towns I’d driven through in the last decade. It was charming, deeply all-American, and postcard pretty. The buildings were old brick or built to resemble housefronts. Even the Ace Hardware looked like it had been extracted from an Old West village.
Located at the base of Big Mountain—an accurate if somewhat too literal name—the town was removed enough from big-city life they still practiced some of the old rituals. In the center square was a statue of Khione and Oreithyia. The mother-daughter pair were depicted naked but for robes made of snow and wind, which provided them the illusion of decency.
Oreithyia, the goddess of mountain winds, and Khione, goddess of snow, were popular totem deities in ski-resort areas, though Ore had her detractors among serious slope junkies. It wasn’t uncommon for those doing climbing expeditions up Everest to make offerings in order to keep her away.
Seth and Ore had a complicated relationship, as did most gods. He felt she sometimes took attention from him and that as god of the storm the winds should be his as well.
Seth would love to be the god of everything, if he had his way.
Blessedly, Ore had infinite patience and didn’t seem to let Seth’s outbursts bother her much. Khione, on the other hand, had a feisty temper. More than once I’d had to deal with rainstorms turning to sudden flurries because she and Seth had butted heads over one thing or another.
In spite of the warm August night, trinkets were laid out on the statue, offerings to the goddesses for a good season to come. This practice had fallen out of favor in larger cities, where offerings would often be stolen. Home shrines and small outlet temples had become much more popular since the eighties.
I loved the look of elaborate public shrines. It meant the people of a town were still friendly with the idea of gods and hadn’t yet become embittered.
Making a quick detour from the main street, I stopped at the Cheap Sleep Motel, liking the straightforward simplicity of the name. I had yet to find a Best Western that was actually best, so I tended seek out the most interesting and vaguely terrifying small-town motels I could.
Plus Sido loved to lecture me about my expense accounts, and chains were often outside my per diem costs.
I slipped my jacket on before going into the main office, hoping to get through the entire encounter without giving away what I was. While the town appeared to be amicable to worship, there were always those who wanted to voice displeasure, and I was in no mood to hear about the time someone’s roof caved in because of a particularly bad storm.
They seemed to think I, personally, did that sort of thing for fun.
You crush an ex-boyfriend’s car one time and suddenly everyone thinks you’re a monster.
I paid a sleepy-eyed middle-aged woman for one night’s stay and pretended not to see the enormous No Pets sign. As long as Fen could keep his chirrups to a minimum, we’d be fine. No sense in drawing attention to rule-breaking.
The woman didn’t even glance up at me as she processed my credit card. “Check out time is eleven. But if you want to stay until noon, that ain’t no trouble, okay?”
“Thanks.”
“Continental breakfast starts at seven.”
“Is it any good?”
“Do you like stale muffins and cereal?”
I smiled, taking my card back from her. “I like anything that isn’t a McSomething in a brown paper bag.”
“Then sure, you’ll like it just fine.”
Thanking her, I took the key for room ten and drove around the back of the building, where one other car was parked.
A black 1970 Dodge Charger.
I sucked a breath in between my teeth and pretended not to see it. Of course, it was parked in front of room eleven, which made it pretty hard to ignore.
I knew my luck couldn’t last.
I ignored the butterflies in my belly and the flare of excitement in my ladybits and grabbed my duffle and Fen’s carrier out of the car. I darted towards my room quietly, hoping I could get in and out without seeing the Charger’s owner. My libido suggested it might be very nice to see him, but my brain was in charge, thank the gods.
Inside, I flipped on the lamp above a small table and used the remote to turn on the TV. Rifling through my bag, I found Fen’s water dish and a big Ziploc bag of kibble. I made a mental note to stop at the grocery store tomorrow and get him some fresh produce. Hell, we could both stand to eat some veggies.
Blue light flickered against the wall as the comedy network played on TV. A fake news show was talking politics, which was a nice change of pace from their usual shtick about the gods. I loved election years for that.
After releasing Fen from his cage, I sat on the bed and watched him.
Fennecs are ridiculous and perfectly useless as divine familiars. I’d been given Fenrir as punishment for insolence when I was fifteen. Twelve years later, the immortal little shit had grown on me, and I was actually glad to have his company. I’d spent my whole adult life crisscrossing the country following storms. Without Fen, I think I’d have gone mad.
But, unlike other Rain Chasers’ familiars, he was barely useful for any magical or protective purposes. Most got ravens or owls. Nocturnal birds of prey were great for scouting ahead or surveying the land.
Me, I had a bad attitude, so I got a hyperactive miniature fox with giant ears who ate kibble and spiders and liked to talk back.
Fen sniffed his dry dog food, then sneezed at it. Never mind it was super-expensive gourmet stuff, apparently made from real meat. What a brat.
He pipped loudly at me, then let out a screech noise, similar to a bat.
“Oh, shush. It’s just for one night.”
Fen hopped, spinning in a circle, then dashed into the bathroom, scrambling on the tile and making a soft thud against the tub when he couldn’t stop. He ran back into the main part of the room, ricocheted off an armchair, and landed on the bed. Fennecs were nocturnal by nature, so he was at the peak of his energy right about now. I was hoping if I let him run off some steam, he wouldn’t keep me up all night. Thankfully he was small and light, and none of his rambunctious behavior was likely to draw attention from other hotel guests. If he got riled up, he could make loud shrieking sounds that would convince anyone listening a woman was being murdered inside, but he knew better than to draw that kind of attention unless it was actually serious. He wasn’t exactly a normal fennec.
Outside, a car engine roared to life, and I waited, holding my breath. He must have seen my car. Must have. And if I knew his, there was no way he hadn’t realized the Mustang belong
ed to me. Especially not with my stupid storm-cloud air freshener.
Not to mention, muscle cars were sort of a calling card for the divinity-adjacent. We tended to favor them over more practical vehicles, because our cars were often the only thing we had any personal say in selecting.
At least I got to pick my clothes. Some others weren’t so lucky.
The car drove off, engine growling the whole way, and when the sound had faded out, I breathed a sigh of relief.
Fen shot off the bed and started tearing around the room from one end to the other, pausing periodically to give me a look like he was testing me. Would I ask him to stop? Yell at him?
“You do you, buddy.” I got a couple pee pads out of my bag and laid them out inside the small, open-front closet. After twelve years the fennec knew how this worked. Normally I’d take him outside since he wouldn’t bother trying to run away, but I didn’t want to get in trouble for having him here, so for tonight he’d need to go indoors. To his credit he didn’t even sneer.
The wee fox might not be able to speak my language, but he managed to communicate with me just fine when he was unhappy about something.
I got off the bed and shucked my jacket, wanting to take a look at the damage before I headed out again.
In the too-bright light of the tiny bathroom I turned my back towards the mirror and peeled off my black tank top. Glancing over my shoulder, I sucked in a breath. Certainly not the worst I’d ever had, but the marks were there.
Whenever lightning strikes, be it the ground, a tree, or in my case a person, it leaves behind a calling card. The official sciency phrase for them is Lichtenberg figures or fractal scarring. Fun fact: lightning itself is actually a Lichtenberg figure. Which was why the scars it leaves behind so closely resemble what made them. Winding, forked branches etched their way across my back from my left shoulder down to my right hip. They were an angry red color that made the pattern stand out obscenely in contrast to my skin.
I let out a small grunt. My whole body felt sore and wrung dry, worse than if I’d run a marathon or done a high-intensity workout. A low-level throbbing ache was working its way through all my muscles. My skin buzzed faintly.
This was what I’d been trained for. What I’d been born for, depending on who you asked. Anyone else who’d taken a lightning strike like that would be dead, but not me. I’d channeled it and used it like a weapon.
Harnessing the power of Seth was one of the perks that went along with being his Rain Chaser. It’s the perks that they love to talk about in the news and in magazine features. The media makes it seem like being destined for a life of servitude to the gods is a special treat.
Those of us indentured knew differently.
They never talked about this side—the ugly, painful, scary side—where we almost die or are left permanently scarred.
Who would drop their kids off at the temples then, if they knew?
I touched the mark at the back of my neck, still perfectly black twenty-seven years later. A cloud with three drops of rain and a black lightning bolt. They used the same image on the weather network to depict a coming storm. To my family it meant that I’d been predestined for a very specific kind of life.
On the bathroom counter my phone buzzed. I answered, turning on the speaker.
“Rain Chasers International. You bring the pain, we bring the rain,” I said cheerfully.
“Funny,” Sido’s familiar voice replied. Judging from her tone, she didn’t find it funny at all. Go figure. “What in Seth’s name did you do now, Tallulah?”
“Uh, my job?”
“So why am I fielding calls from Manea’s temple suggesting you attempted to kill her cleric?”
Prescott had ratted me out already? What a dick.
“I had a job to do.” No sense in pointing out they’d been trying to drive me off the road at the time. Sido didn’t care much for semantics. “And I got the idol Seth wanted.”
The line was quiet for a moment. “He’ll be pleased to hear that. It might make things…easier.”
A chill crept down my spine. “What do you mean?”
“He’ll explain himself. Make sure you stay where you are.”
Oh, crap. If Seth wanted to see me in person, things were not going well. I thought I’d done my job and that would be that until I got back to the temple.
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
“Manea is unhappy.”
Manea was always unhappy. A chipper death goddess would have been super unnerving. “I was doing what I was asked.”
“Things have gotten complicated. Just wait for Seth.” She hung up without waiting for me to acknowledge the order.
Tugging the hem of my shirt down again and ignoring how much it hurt my sensitive flesh, I went back into the main room and grabbed my jacket. I could stay here and worry, watch Comedy Central until the inevitable South Park reruns started, and find cheap vending machine candy, or I could get out of here and find some real food.
My body knew the latter was the only option.
A god might be able to wield the power of the heavens to no ill effect, but I was mortal and I was starving.
Chapter Three
It is a truth universally acknowledged that any small town in possession of more than five hundred residents must be in want of a Chinese food restaurant. This need meant almost every time I stopped somewhere, I could count on finding chow mein and Kung Pao chicken.
I was a woman of simple needs.
Whitefish was a town after my own heart. They had not one but two Chinese restaurants in the span of a few blocks. I stopped at the first one I saw, a place called China Wall with a red dragon painted on the glass. My maps app told me the one down the block was a chain, and much like motels, I preferred my restaurants more homegrown.
The waitress showed me to a table in the back of the nearly empty restaurant. The only other people around were a teen couple who were awkward and adorable, likely on their first date given all the blushing and nervous shifting, and an older man sitting alone reading a newspaper.
I sat down, pulled out a copy of Karen Robards’ Morning Song, and set it on the table for after I ordered. The cover was torn and the spine broken, with several dog-eared pages inside. The cost of relying on used bookstores meant I had to deal with very well-loved books.
The waitress returned, and I ordered my two must-haves as well as sweet and sour pork, honey garlic balls, and beef with broccoli. She gave the seat across from me a quick glance as if I must be expecting someone else.
“Oh, and Chinese fried rice,” I added defiantly. “And a Coke.”
She wrote down my order and scurried off without a word. Had this been a dim sum restaurant I really could have blown her mind with my capacity for face-stuffing.
Using your body as a conduit of pure electric energy burns a fuckton of calories. It was the only reason I was still thin, because my eating habits could best be described as…bachelor.
I had just opened the book and started reading when the chair on the opposite side of the table scraped against the floor and a large body settled into it.
My stomach was doing flip-flops and my pulse hammered about a mile a minute, but I pretended to ignore him.
Not all that easy when he was sitting two feet across from me.
To his credit he didn’t clear his throat or shift uncomfortably. He did nothing to get my attention except for exist within close proximity. In the end, that proved to be enough. I set the book down and looked up.
Where Prescott could best be described as beautiful, this new arrival was far from it. Which wasn’t to say he was ugly, by any means. He was…ugly handsome? Was that a thing?
If it was, it was looking right back at me, with intense whisky-brown eyes and a frown.
“Cade.” I played it cool.
“Tallulah.”
The waitress returned and asked Cade for his drink order. She was about to walk away when he asked for a menu. I didn’t bother telling him he
hadn’t been invited to stay. He was already sitting here. I might be a dick, but I wasn’t enough of one to make him eat alone.
Plus I secretly didn’t mind that he was here.
As he perused the menu, I gave him a once-over. I hadn’t seen him in a couple months, and in that time he’d changed in subtle ways. His typical crew cut had grown out slightly, letting his dark brown hair show that it could become curly, given half the chance. This also told me he hadn’t been back to his temple since we’d last seen each other. Cade only trusted the temple to cut his hair.
He wore an olive-green military-style jacket and a plain black T-shirt. Stubble darkened his cheeks, and his broad nose resembled that of a seasoned boxer, as if it had been broken several times and never quite healed right. Seth help me, but he looked good, and though I’d never admit it out loud, I was glad to see him.
He ordered BBQ duck and Szechuan noodles.
When the waitress was gone, his attention gravitated back to me, and we stared at each other across the table.
“How did you find me?” I asked, when I felt like I was starting to blush.
He made a dismissive, snorting noise and glanced around the restaurant, his gaze pausing on the red lanterns and mural of a Chinese pagoda. “Give me a little credit.”
He knew me well enough to be aware of my habits by this point. The kind of motels I’d gravitate towards. The restaurants I usually frequented. His showing up at both was a not-so-subtle way of telling me he’d been paying attention.
Cade was a few years older than me and had been out in the field before I’d left my temple. We’d seen each other in passing, but it wasn’t until I was out in the real world that I’d actually gotten to know him. His job and mine often intersected, unluckily for me.
Literally.
“How’s Ardra these days?” I picked at the corner of my book’s cover, trying to ignore the knot of hunger gnawing away at my stomach. If my food didn’t get here soon, I might start eating the pages.
Cade’s mouth formed a narrow line, and he nodded, agreeing with a statement I hadn’t made. I used to love poking fun at the unfortunate hand he’d been dealt, but after a while the jokes had stopped feeling so funny. I wasn’t a teenager anymore, and I knew a lot more about the burden he carried than I had back then.
