by Sierra Dean
Her eyes didn’t move from me the entire time as I set down Fen’s carrier and took a seat in the chair next to the door. The bed practically smirked at me, reminding me how badly I’d been craving sleep just seconds earlier.
Now that I was sitting I remembered my decorum and bowed my head. “Goddess Macha, keeper of horses, bringer of war, sister of the Morrigan. To what do I owe this humbling gift of your presence?” As a rule I didn’t owe her any kind of fealty because my wagon was already hitched to Seth. But I could still lay the politeness on nice and thick.
She didn’t move from her seat. Instead she laced her fingers together and placed her hands gently in her lap. Unlike Badb, she didn’t wear the threat of violence right on the surface. Everything about Badb was made to unsettle whoever was near her. She radiated something that made people scared. With Macha the fear was more implicit. I knew I was scared of her, but I also wasn’t ready to wet myself.
It was a very weird balance to strike.
“It has come to my attention you’ve decided to investigate these…deaths.” Macha waved her hand as she said the word, like she wasn’t sure it was the appropriate way to state it.
“The initiate deaths?”
“Yes.”
“I wouldn’t say I’m investigating them…” Man, just how fast had news of my meeting with Detective Stowe made the rounds? It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours yet, but here she was like the femme fatale in a film noir, ready to bring a world of trouble down on my little P.I. head.
Except I wasn’t a P.I. I already had a job, and it had nothing to do with solving murders.
“You will help me find out who killed my cleric, Rain Chaser. Have you any idea how long it’s been since I have had a new initiate?”
I did not. “A while?”
“I have not had a new cleric since the final days of the second World War, pet. I would like to know who has taken this gift from me because I will have my vengeance on them and everyone who has ever smiled fondly upon them. Am I understood?”
“It’s a bit more complicated than—”
“You humans.” She sneered as she spoke the word, like it tasted bad. “There are always a million excuses to do nothing. Your lives are so short they border on meaningless. You’d think you might like to make something worthwhile out of the little time you’re given.”
Ouch.
It’s not like I was just sitting around on my ass stuffing my face with bonbons every day. That shit was reserved for the scant few off days I got every year. I bristled at her implication that I was being lazy instead of jumping at the chance to play Nancy Drew for her.
“Solving murders isn’t really what I do,” I explained.
“And while I’m sure making water fall from the sky and finding Seth virgins to deflower is all very taxing on your schedule, you will also do this.”
I was about to remind her that she wasn’t my boss, but the retort stuck in the back of my throat. Speaking up might be a bit too confrontational, and my sense of self-preservation suggested I might want to rethink pissing off the goddess who brought wars in her wake.
“I’ll do what I can.”
“This isn’t pure selfishness. There are others who want to know. These deaths cannot go unanswered. It makes us look…” She drifted off before she said weak. Such an admission would be impossible to confess to me. “It makes us look uncaring.”
I almost laughed.
Because the gods wanted to maintain their all-loving, sunshine-and-rainbows public image? Yeah, okay, sure.
“I’ll do what I can,” I repeated.
“I will be back in two weeks, Rain Chaser. If you don’t have an answer for me by then, I will find myself someone more useful who can.”
I wasn’t sure if she was implying that she would kill me if I failed, or just that she’d find someone less useless to solve the mystery.
Given the choice, I didn’t want to find out.
Chapter Eleven
Five hours later I’d slept, eaten, and was looking at a bright and clear morning, with only the haze of smoke to detract from what would have been a perfectly blue sky.
Not a cloud in sight.
“Fuck me,” I grumbled.
I was standing on a ridge, overlooking the encroaching fire. Leo stood beside me yawning, and we had been joined by Yvonne—the motel owner—and Rhys Carmichael, the town’s mayor. The firefighters had left before the break of dawn, but one of them had come to join us on the ridge. I could tell by the way he was looking at me that he was dubious I could do anything to help.
Given the current weather conditions, that made two of us.
“It’s at about fifteen thousand acres right now,” the firefighter said, taking a long pull off his water bottle. “And if we work all day and get the water bomber we asked for, and the wind stays low, we might be able to keep it at fifteen. But we can’t stop it. It’s so dry, might as well light a match in a newspaper warehouse, you know?” He shrugged, looking resigned.
I wasn’t sure if he didn’t care about Rhys’s and Yvonne’s feelings or was oblivious to the fact he was crushing their hope with every added word. They’d pinned all their remaining expectations on me, and I was standing here grimacing at the skyline.
I needed a fucking cloud. Just one. Even a fluffy wisp of white would do the trick. There was so much I could do with that, but I couldn’t give them their miracle without something to get the ball rolling.
Offering an apologetic smile to them both, I continued to assess the raging fire, as if I needed to get more details before I could begin.
How was I going to explain to them that the only thing standing between their town and certain obliteration was a wee little cumulus cloud? That I wasn’t strong enough to answer their prayers because the sky was too fucking blue.
Even I knew how much that would sound like a pathetic excuse.
After a few more minutes standing in silence, watching the fire inch its way towards Lovelock and everything these people cared about, I was struck by a very bad idea.
Normally I’d wait.
It was a rare day when there was no cloud cover at all, and if I held out a couple hours, we’d probably see something. The issue here was I didn’t think these guys had a couple hours.
There was going to come a point very soon when Lovelock would need to be evacuated. A point where their property would start being destroyed plot by plot. The longer I sat around waiting, the longer their prayers would go unanswered.
I didn’t think that was really an option.
“I need to consult with my partner in private,” I announced at last, tugging Leo’s shirtsleeve and making my way back down the hill.
“Partner, is it now?” He smirked, but I could tell the scene laid out before us was making him as uneasy as it was making me. The air around us smelled like campfire, and it might have been pleasant if I hadn’t known why it smelled that way.
“Hey, if you’re along for the ride, I’ve got to call you something. I figured partner was better than sidekick. I can correct myself if you want though. Maybe call you my lackey?”
“No. Partner is fine. Did you drag me down here to make it look like you have a plan and you’re hoping they think we’re sorting out the details, rather than talking about what my professional label is?”
I let out a hiccup of laughter. “You seem to think you have me pegged pretty well already, don’t you?”
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
“Two points.” I held up one finger. “First, what kind of horrible monster do you think I am to fake like I have a plan in front of the people who have paid handsomely to bring me here?” Just as he was looking crestfallen, I raised my second finger and said, “Two, that’s brilliant, and I’m glad you’re with me now so I can use that plan in the future. But, no. I have an actual plan, and I’m going to need your help.”
Leo regarded me with barely concealed distrust. This from a man who had spent our first hour together stealing wallets
and watches from strangers on Bourbon Street even after I told him his life was in danger.
Seemed like a strange time to get cagey about trust.
Granted I’d also dragged him through the underworld and we both nearly died, so maybe he was right to be a bit suspicious of my plans.
“I’m going to hate this.”
“Maybe.”
We took a few more steps away from the group on the crest until we were back at my car. I got in, and he followed my lead, but I didn’t start the car. We weren’t actually going anywhere, I just wanted the illusion of privacy to do what it was I wanted to try.
“Sometimes, if I need a direct channel to Seth, I can use Fen as a conduit. I can’t bring enough energy through him to make clouds appear, but I can…well, I can call Seth, sort of.”
“Sort of. You mean your fennec is a weird cell phone to the gods?”
I grimaced, hating how clichéd and silly that phrasing made it sound. In fact, it was a lot more like two tin cans on a string, crossing between dimensional boundaries, but that was hard to explain without coming across like an insane person.
“Maybe a walkie-talkie is a better example,” I said.
“Okay, great. So let’s go back to the hotel and get the little bastard, you call up Dad, we make it rain like it’s the champagne room at a strip club, and we get the fuck out of this weird town.”
“I have something different in mind.”
“Whatever you’re going to do I doubt I have much say in the matter, so you might as well get it over with.”
For the first time on this trip I took a really good look at Leo, trying to read what was going on behind his laissez-faire exterior. He had this ability to appear as if he didn’t care about anyone or anything, like he was constantly laughing at his own private joke. I hadn’t stopped to wonder how all these major life changes he was going through might be impacting him.
I’d had my whole life to adjust to the idea of being a Rain Chaser, and I’d spent twenty years learning how to live around Seth and the temple. I had, in that time, I’d come to take a lot of very strange and incomprehensible things for granted.
Leo had been with the temple two months. Two months to come to terms with the fact his father was a god, his mother had lied to him about it, and he had a number of half-siblings he’d never met running around the world.
That…that wasn’t a whole lot of time.
Because he acted like he didn’t care, I’d assumed he was fine with everything, just rolling with the punches like he did with most things. But now I was starting to see the faint hairline cracks below his surface. The pained look in his eyes, the way he squirmed a little whenever I mentioned Seth. It had taken me too long, perhaps, but I was finally realizing Leo wasn’t okay with this at all.
I was going to have to be a bit gentler with him.
Starting right after this.
“It’s probably better you don’t know what’s happening,” I admitted. Then I pressed my hand against his forehead and closed my eyes.
I wished I didn’t know what was coming. In truth, since I’d never tried this with a person before, I really didn’t know what to expect. It was bad enough when I opened up a connection with Fen. Leo’s force was much, much stronger.
I lowered a mental gate, opening myself up to whatever psychic energy might be nearby. This was the other reason I’d moved us into the car. Outside there was the panic of nature, the disappointment of the firefighters, the fear and worry of Yvonne and Rhys. It was too much. I’d be bombarded before I ever got a chance to find what I was looking for.
“Let me in,” I whispered.
“Uhhh.”
I cracked open one eyelid, the world already taking on a hazy, pastel hue now that I could see the auras of everything around me. His was bright red. Gods, he was a hot mess, wasn’t he? It was much worse than I’d anticipated.
“Just close your eyes and relax.”
Leo chuckled a little. “I bet you say that to all the guys.”
I punched him in the thigh with my free hand, not breaking the other connection I’d made to his forehead.
“Ow.”
“Focus, you idiot.”
“Fine.”
He did as he was told, and I closed my eyes again as well. The moment he let his guard down, I felt it. His body relaxed, and at the same time a sensation of buzzing power sizzled along the skin of my palm. It was familiar to what I’d felt with Fen, but I could already tell this would be different. The sensation vibrated right up my arm, humming inside my bones.
Leo let out a small breath but said nothing.
I steeled myself and then dropped the final barrier I’d been holding in place, the one I’d been trained to hold on to for twenty years.
My entire being was a conduit for Seth. That was why I existed. I was connected to him, which was how I knew where to go and which storms to follow. It was how I could sense clouds at night, and how I could create a thunderstorm with nothing more than a thought.
The wall I held up was the one thing that kept me from feeling all of that all the time. If I let myself, I’d be able to taste rain in the air from miles away, feel the rumble of thunder across state lines, and most importantly, know just what Seth was thinking, feeling, or wanting at any given moment.
I think for a time, clerics had been forced to exist with that kind of sensory overload, but it was too much. Way too much. They’d all died young and insane.
So we’d been trained to hold ourselves aloft in little psychic fortresses as a way to keep us sane and alive that much longer.
As soon as my final wall came down, I felt everything.
I was awash with an electric kind of rage usually reserved for the times in life where you would wipe a person off the face of the earth in a heartbeat if you had the power. The bitter, hateful feeling of knowing you can’t. I was overwhelmed with lust—both carnal and for the blood of my enemies. Seth’s enemies. And I was drowning in a hunger so deep it was like a bottomless pit had opened inside of me and I knew there was nothing that could fill it.
I felt so much it hurt.
My body was one giant exposed nerve, and by connecting myself to Leo—who was half Seth’s—I was effectively sticking that nerve in a live socket.
I was in agony.
It was the kind of pain that was so intense it short-circuited your brain and made it feel almost like pleasure.
My breath caught in my throat, and I had to swallow a lump down in order to speak.
“Seth.”
Nothing.
I knew how this worked. If my walls were down, that prick could feel my presence now more than ever. And with Leo acting like an amplifier, there was no way he couldn’t hear me.
“Seth.”
Something stirred, the way snow shifts on a sidewalk in winter. It was as if I was holding one end of a leash, and whatever was on the other side had just woken up.
The car felt like the belly of a large dragon that had swallowed Leo and me whole, and now that it was awakening from a long slumber, everything around us trembled slightly.
To have the attention of a god on you was a feeling unlike any other, especially if you understood that they could see your every desire, your every secret thought. I had opened myself up for this, and I could only hope he wouldn’t delve too deep below the surface. My soul was largely fed on bitterness and contempt.
Mostly for Seth.
I also had some secret little lusts of my own I’d prefer my boss not know about.
“You dare demand an audience?”
What had I expected him to ask? My guts trembled, and I broke out into a cold sweat. Fuck, I should have just waited a couple more hours and hoped clouds would show up on their own. Were a few Nevada homesteads really worth this?
They were to the people who owned them, I guess.
“Hurry,” Leo whispered. Beneath my palm his forehead was slick with sweat. I had no idea what he was feeling right now, but I gathered it wasn’t p
articularly pleasant.
“I need the rain,” I said.
Seth was silent. I couldn’t actually see him. This was a state composed entirely of sensation. I sometimes thought of it as the Texture. Inside the Texture there wasn’t anything concrete like form or bodies. It was all emotion and feeling. Physical feeling, like putting your hand inside a box and trying to make blind guesses as to what you were touching. Was it fur? Was it eggshells? Except you touched everything with your mind.
Was it fury? Was it love?
The guesses were just as vague sometimes.
“You call on me for rain?” Because the voice was inside my head it didn’t boom the same way it did when I saw Seth in person, yet my skin broke out in goose bumps all the same. The effect was identical, no matter the scenario we were in.
“I beg you for the rain.”
“Why?”
This was another of his favorite games. Tell me why I should help you. He didn’t care about the tithes, he didn’t care what happened to these people, and he sure as shit didn’t care if I failed. I needed to give him a reason to care enough that he’d actually help me.
“They’ve forgotten your power here. This place is full of drought and dust. Send me the rain so I can show them why you are the master of any domain you see fit. Let me shape the land in your image. They will build monuments to your glory by the time I’m finished.” He’d like that. He liked monuments.
The town might actually build one too, provided I put the giant fucking fire out first.
“Make them tremble.”
“Your name will be whispered in hushed tones.”
Leo had begun to convulse, the way someone with a fever shakes, rocked by chills in spite of how hot their temperature is.
“Very well.”
The very instant he acquiesced I ripped my hand free from Leo’s head and raised every psychic protection I had. My hands were trembling, and each breath clawed its way out of my lungs so painfully my chest rattled with the effort. The first white-hot pinpoints of a migraine were starting to blossom into pain flowers inside my skull.
And I hadn’t even done the hard part yet.
