by Sierra Dean
“I’m not tired.”
His audible snort told me he wasn’t buying my bullshit. Not that he ever had. “All right. Just don’t get into any trouble.”
I barked out a laugh, and it felt good to be honestly amused. Some of the tension building inside me released along with the laugh, and I sank more comfortably into the chair. “No more than usual, I promise.”
Without saying anything else he returned to the room. Once inside I could hear the rumble of his voice as he spoke to Fen. I couldn’t make out the whole conversation, but I’m pretty sure he was asking if the fennec was hungry. The timbre of his words was warm, friendly, not full of annoyance that he was stuck feeding my familiar.
Maybe he realized that the hungry creature wouldn’t let him sleep if the food dish was empty.
I let out a yawn in spite of my earlier assurances that I wasn’t sleepy. If I got too worn down, I’d head back inside, but for the time being I needed this moment to myself to breathe.
Without having my phone out to check the time I didn’t know how long I’d been outside—it might have been mere minutes, or perhaps I’d dozed off and hours had passed. But suddenly I was nearly blinded by headlights. The rumble of an engine cut through the previous silence of the night.
It was as if the car had appeared out of nowhere.
I scrambled for my bag, yanking the gun out and aiming it in the general direction of where the driver would be.
“Please, Tallulah, that’s not necessary.” The female voice was rich and friendly, like cinnamon and chocolate. I’d never heard anyone with a voice like hers, so in spite of being momentarily unable to see, I knew precisely who had arrived.
“Sido.” I let my breath out all at once and set the gun down on the arm of the chair.
The lights turned off, and I blinked away the orbs they left behind in my sight. Sidonie Barker was leaning against the door of my Mustang, looking every bit like the cat who got the cream. Her tightly curled hair was a halo around her head, glowing faintly under the parking-lot lights. Her skin was a lovely warm brown with a pink undertone that gave the impression she was constantly blushing. Although she was in her forties, she didn’t look a day over twenty-five. Her complexion was flawless and only improved upon by her bright smile.
“Hello, darling.” She closed the gap between us and gave me two friendly kisses, one on each cheek. When she attempted to withdraw, I grabbed her and pulled her in for a tight hug.
Sido was the kind of comforting presence that made you feel better simply by being near her. It had been a scant few weeks since I’d been in Seattle, yet it felt like I hadn’t seen her in months.
When I’d been delivered to the temple on my seventh birthday, Sido had taken me in. She had been in her mid-twenties then, and still looked exactly the same today. If someone told me Sido was a hundred years old, I wouldn’t doubt it. Her face was young, but her brown eyes were filled with a century’s worth of knowledge.
She was a special case among the Rain Chasers.
There’d been a missed generation, where no chosen were born, and the fear at the temple had been that worship of Seth was diminishing, and as a result no one had arrived to serve him. Sido had taken the job.
In a way she was born to abide by Seth’s will, in as much as she was his daughter.
And so she served him until I was born, and when I arrived, it had been up to her to train me. She’d taken on the role of sister, mother, and friend, and was the closest thing I had to a companion as I grew up.
Without Sido I probably wouldn’t have survived my tempestuous adolescence. Surely someone at the temple would have killed me if not for her endless patience to guide me through.
“I brought you your baby.” She nodded towards the Mustang.
It couldn’t have been more than four hours since I’d texted her to request it. “You think whatever flying-car magic got you here might get Cade and me to New Orleans overnight?”
She gave me a thin smile and didn’t laugh at my joke. “No.”
“I was—”
“Do you think it’s wise to be traveling with the Luckless One?”
“Cade,” I corrected.
“Cade Melpomene is not going to do you any favors.”
“Like Seth did me favors by pitting Manea against me?”
“Tallulah Corentine, you forget yourself.” Sido’s expression was fierce and serious, and I knew instantly I’d made a mistake in speaking ill of Seth in front of her.
“I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“You can’t blame the gods for your trouble.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. Was she seriously trying to pin all this on me? Sido was great, but sometimes she leaned a bit too heavily on the gods are never wrong side of things. That never made sense to me. They were definitely wrong fairly often. But to say such things out loud was not only frowned upon, it was actually forbidden. My sass mouth could get me in a lot of trouble if the wrong person heard what I said.
Sido wasn’t likely to forget it, either, but at least she wouldn’t punish me with anything more than stern words.
As relieved as I’d been to see her, now I wished she would leave. This trip was already hard enough without her unique brand of guilt applied to the situation. She had a way of making me feel responsible for the activities I did in Seth’s name, and it was a little hypocritical, honestly. I was bound to the god. I had no option but to do what he asked. Yet Sido acted like the things that happened to me as a result of my actions were only my fault.
I took the death idol, and now Manea had sicced a litany of angry gods on me.
And somehow this was my problem.
Sido, who had a gift for reading my emotions no matter how well I tried to hide them, saw something on my face that made her soften. She took my hands and held them between hers, squeezing gently.
“I know it doesn’t seem like it, Lulu, but this will all work out as it’s meant to.”
“What if it’s meant to work out with me dead?”
She was quiet, and I knew she was trying to come up with a diplomatic way to say my death would have been the will of the gods, but she couldn’t do it without upsetting me. “I don’t believe that will be the case. You are important to Seth.”
I guffawed at the absurdity, but since I didn’t actually voice my disbelief, she couldn’t scold me. “Thanks for bringing the car.”
Sido kept hold of my hands and pursed her lips. Something else was on her mind, and whatever it was I wouldn’t like it. “Seth wants me to take the idol.”
I wrenched my hands free, no longer just annoyed but outright angry. “That’s why you came in such a hurry, then? Daddy is worried I’ll die and Manea will get her hands on it again.” I didn’t wait for her to make up a lie. I yanked the strap of my bag and pulled it up, rifling through it until my fingers bumped against the carved surface of the skull.
My first instinct was to throw it at her. But since my first instinct was rarely right in confrontational situations, I thrust it in her direction. “I don’t know why the damn thing is so important to him. What does a storm god want with a death idol?”
Sido brushed her hand almost lovingly over the skull’s surface, tracing the fine details before hugging it close to her chest. “It’s not about what the skull represents.”
“Then what?”
“It’s about who the skull belonged to.”
My pulse beat a little quicker as her words registered. Her face was telling me to let it go, but I’d never been good at that. “Who was it?”
“Let’s just say if you don’t find my brother in time, Manea will have no problem finding herself a replacement.”
Chapter Fourteen
Stopping in Shreveport felt like giving up.
But after fifteen hours of close-quarters tense silence, both Cade and I were desperate for a break from driving. We pulled in at the cheapest motel we could find just over the Louisiana border, and unloaded our bags and Fen’s carrier from
the car.
I hadn’t mentioned my visit from Sido the previous night, and Cade hadn’t asked what miracle had gotten the car to us overnight. Good thing, too, because magic would have been my one-word answer.
Big bonuses: my jacket had dried out, and I’d gone a full day without needing to use my powers.
Apparently even the gods don’t venture into Texas in the middle of summer.
Instead of relief, however, I think we were both anticipating the other shoe would drop any moment. It was too easy, too calm. There was no way we’d get to New Orleans without something terrible befalling us.
Turned out Louisiana was much more inviting to the immortals than Texas had been.
We’d barely been in the room ten minutes when I noticed the smell.
Cade, who had flopped down on the thousand-year-old loveseat, leaving the bed to me and Fen, wrinkled his nose and sat upright. “Do you…? Was that…?” He shot an accusing glare at the fennec, who in turn huffed indignantly at the man.
“I smell it too.”
Sulfuric stink filled the room, so think and pungent my eyes began to water, and I had to cover my mouth with my shirt. Fen whined loudly before burying himself under my pillows. The scraping sound of nails on wood came from the door. More scratching was audible in the bathroom from the small window over the shower.
Have I mentioned how much I hate being so right all the time?
Cade was sitting bolt upright, trying to focus on the door and window simultaneously. When we’d checked in, I hadn’t wanted to share a room again. Now that we were stuck in here, I was glad we were together.
The rotten-egg reek became more cloying, with new aspects of onion and shit. I swiped at my eyes, chasing away the tears that had sprung up. The odor was unbearable. I was desperate to throw open a window or escape through the door.
Straight into the arms of whatever was waiting for us out there.
“In,” a voice rasped.
The word voice didn’t seem quite right. A voice indicated speech, and in turn, humanity. This was the sound an animal would make if it woke up one day and suddenly spoke English. It was a raspy, bone-chilling speech that was certainly not of this earth.
“Dammit.” Cade was on his feet and across the room in an instant, digging through his bag for something.
“In.”
“No thank you,” I shouted.
Cade paused his search to look up at me, one brow raised incredulously and his mouth open in a What drugs are you on? expression. Like I thought I could actually send the thing away by being polite.
I figured it was at least worth a try.
The scratching noises continued, undeterred by my refusal. Go figure.
Seeing as Cade was concerned enough to go for a weapon—probably—I went for my own bag, digging through it until I came out with my gun, a six-shot revolver. If we got through this alive, I’d consider upgrading to something with a larger clip.
Cade found what he was looking for, an enormous knife that glinted almost blue in the overhead lights. Not what I was expecting his weapon of choice to be, but if he could use it to protect himself, who was I to judge?
“What is it?” he asked.
“I make lightning; I can’t see through doors.”
Too many words. My lungs burned from the putrid air, and I covered my nose and mouth with my shirt once more. I hoped this wouldn’t do any long-term damage to Fen, who was still hiding under the pillows.
Either my sarcasm hadn’t registered with Cade or he was choosing to ignore it. Instead of replying he edged his way over to the curtain hanging across the motel room’s front window. As his fingers traced the curtain panel, I said, “Wait.”
The word wasn’t even out of my mouth when the lights shut off with the loud pop sound of a breaker going.
The world outside the room was just as dark, with no residual illumination from streetlights or the motel’s main office. Whatever had taken out our lights had done in the whole area around us at the same time.
I took a deep breath that failed to soothe me in any way, and disengaged the safety on my gun.
From bad to worse—the Tallulah Corentine story.
Fearing I might accidentally fire if the door burst open, I lowered my gun to my side. With Cade in the room it would be our luck that the motel manager was trying to warn us of something and I’d end up killing him.
I’d rather not add that to my list of weekly fuckups, thank you.
I’d wait to see if our immediate doom was lurking outside before taking aim.
“In.”
It could stop saying that any time now. I breathed in to steady my nerves and then gagged. It was such a revolting smell I could taste it coating my tongue. Maybe this was part of the plan, to drive us to the verge of insanity by making us breathe this fetid air for an extended period of time. After long enough we’d be so desperate for a clean breeze we’d submit to anything.
I wasn’t at that point yet.
This was a new one for me, meaning whatever was outside was something I hadn’t come up against before. Twenty years of training and experience had given me an extensive mental library of gods, goddesses, demis, and their people.
My internal Wikipedia search was drawing a blank.
“Do you know what it is?” I asked Cade. I wished it wasn’t so dark; I would have liked to be able to see him.
“No.”
So we were in the dark both literally and figuratively.
Super awesome.
As suddenly as it had started, the scraping stopped and the smell vanished. The room felt too quiet, too fresh. It made me all the more uneasy for the absence of anything strange.
Then something grazed the back of my neck.
I made a loud yipe sound and wheeled around, swinging out with my gun hand and hoping to make contact with something. Of course I didn’t. I backpedaled and hit the mattress, accidentally finding myself sitting. Someone grabbed me by the collar of my jacket and yanked me backwards across the bed, but before I could lash out again, Cade said, “It’s me.”
It hadn’t been him who touched me first though.
“We’re not alone,” I whispered, my voice much too loud.
“We assssked you to let ussss in.” The speaker was mere feet away, still hidden by the dark folds of the room. Their words were like dead leaves rustling, each sibilant s-sound as raspy as a snake’s kiss.
“And we said no,” I snapped back.
“We need no invitationssss. We were being polite.”
“Guess you decided to stop being polite then.”
I kept expecting Cade to interrupt me and warn against my backtalk, but he didn’t.
“Ssssilence, inssssolent whelp.”
Apparently someone wasn’t pleased with my repartee.
The lights came back on, and I screamed, reeling backwards into Cade, who caught me easily, even with the big knife still in his hand.
The creature standing across the bed from us was grotesque in the purest sense of the word. It looked as if it had been hewn together using parts of a dozen different animals. Its legs belonged to a goat, its face was human, but with the antlers of a deer crowning it. It had human hands but instead of arms, the night-black wings of a bird. It had one human breast, but the opposite side of its chest was flat and masculine. The tail of a lion wrapped around one ankle, flicking lightly like that of an irritated cat. The creature’s eyes were lizardlike slits, and its skin was so white it looked clear.
Cade had gone stone-still at my side, his arm looped around my waist.
“I’ll give you this…” His voice was shockingly calm. “You’re never boring company, Sparky.”
“Thanks.”
My immediate thought was to ask the thing what it wanted, but since I doubted I’d like the answer, I asked, “Who are you?”
“Sssstupid mortal doessssn’t know me?”
“Guess you’re not a major enough god to have popped up in the histories,” I retorted. It had
called me stupid. I wasn’t a fan of being insulted during introductions.
“Now, now, Mormo. Be nice to the girl. She may yet prove useful to us.” This new arrival was in the bathroom, which remained in shadow, but her voice was entirely female.
As I waited for her to enter the room, I rolled the creature’s name around in my mind. Mormo, Mormo… Why did it sound like something I should know?
Then our new guest walked into the room.
“Fuck.”
“Double fuck,” Cade agreed.
Though our new arrival wasn’t as horrific on the eyes, she was a deeply troubling addition to the mix. It didn’t matter that she looked completely human, because standing next to Mormo it was obvious which one of the two was scarier.
“Hecate.” I pushed down on Cade’s arm, which was still wielding the knife. This was a situation where we’d do best to be as nonthreatening as possible. Hecate wouldn’t be afraid of us, but she would certainly remind us why we should be afraid of her.
“Hello.”
Was she here to fulfill Manea’s request, or did she have other reasons for doing a mystical B&E into our motel room? I sincerely doubted she’d send Mormo in first if she just wanted to have a friendly chat. The creature didn’t exactly instill a warm and fuzzy feeling in my chest.
Something much closer to an arrhythmia was squeezing my heart at the moment, giving me a lightheaded, sick feeling. Had I accidentally thought we’d made it through a whole day without trouble? This was what I got for mentally mocking the gods.
They loved to kick me when I was down, and then keep on kicking.
“You don’t look pleased to see me.” Her voice was difficult to come to terms with. It was soft and mellifluous but carried an unmistakable edge of malice. She wasn’t to be underestimated.
Hecate was the goddess of moonlight and magic, of ghosts and crossroads, both metaphorical and actual. The more I thought of it, the more logical it was for us to meet with her on this particular journey. The reason Mormo’s name sounded familiar was because it was deeply rooted in Hecate’s history. Mormo was a god in its own right, but subservient to Hecate, often existing only to ride her coattails.
