Thunder Road (Rain Chaser Book 1)

by Sierra Dean

  Ardra, the goddess of bad luck and misfortune, was not a popular designation, for obvious reasons. While Cade himself was not particularly unlucky, bad news tended to follow him around like a cloud.

  That was why our paths crossed so often. When storm water broke levies, when trees crushed roofs, or lightning struck a home…that was usually Cade. Unlike me, who typically answered prayers to end droughts, the prayers Cade answered were often for third parties. People wished for terrible things to befall their friends and neighbors, and Ardra loved to fulfill those prayers. The dirty work of which often fell to the man sitting across from me.

  Typically he bore it well, but today he looked tired, with dark circles under his eyes.

  “Sorry.” Though I hadn’t teased him, I felt bad for bringing up Ardra when he was so obviously worn down.

  The waitress returned with our food, giving us a reprieve from the awkwardness. I’d worked adjacent to him for twelve years, but sometimes he felt like a stranger to me. He was so quiet and withdrawn I never knew if he actually enjoyed spending time with me or if I was merely a familiar face he gravitated towards. I liked having him near me when he did show up, in spite of his unlucky nature. There was something about being around Cade that reminded me I was a person instead of a cleric. He brought out the Tallulah side of me, beyond my Rain Chaser title.

  My dinner was delicious. I scarfed down the whole plate of sweet and sour pork before bothering to look up at him again. He was watching me appraisingly, barely half-finished with his plate of noodles. I’d never learned to be ladylike, and I wasn’t about to start now. If he was disgusted by me, that was just too bad.

  A small smile twitched the corner of his lips. “You eat like you’re the last of fifteen kids. I’ve never met anyone who could eat like you.”

  This sounded so close to a compliment I stuffed a honey garlic chicken ball in my mouth and smirked. Once I was done chewing, I said, “It’s the all-carb, all-fat, all-MSG diet.”

  “It’s doing wonders for you.”

  Heat suddenly swelled inside me, a faint, dizzying sensation of pleasure and awareness. I blushed and started eating again so I didn’t need to answer him. Was he flirting with me? Yet another thing I hadn’t been taught at the temple. All we’d learned there was No boys, stay pure for your god.

  Yeah, right.

  Cade took a bite of duck and chewed, but kept staring at me. I didn’t want the heaviness of his gaze to disarm me, but he was making me feel self-conscious, which in turn was making me eat more out of sheer rebellion.

  I hardly tasted my Kung Pao chicken.

  Once I was down to the beef and broccoli, and fried rice, I combined the two on one plate and pushed them around with my fork.

  “You’re not here to burn the restaurant down, are you?” I gave him a serious look, and this time he smiled for real.

  “No, I’m already done with what I came to do.”

  “Oh?”

  The smile vanished. “I was at North Valley Hospital on an official invite.”

  I waved my hand between us, dismissing any further comments. Neither he nor I wanted to talk about the kind of bad tidings he could bring to a hospital.

  Cade’s job and Prescott’s often went hand in hand as well.

  What a fine trio we made.

  I stole a piece of duck off his plate and popped it in my mouth. The salty, fatty skin practically dissolved on my tongue, and I made a happy mmm sound in appreciation.

  The previous tension had vanished, and he shoved his plate towards me. “Finish it if you want.”

  “No, I just wanted to see if it tasted as good as it looked.”

  Cade gave me a look that suggested he was going to say something, and I realized a beat too late how my comment might be reimagined as a double entendre. This was why they should have taught us about flirting in the temple. I managed not to blush and met his gaze defiantly, as if I’d intended the second meaning all along.

  “It does,” he said.

  “But you can keep it.” I nudged the plate back at him.

  This was new. Cade and I typically had a professional, cordial relationship of mutual respect and occasional admiration. Honestly, until tonight I had assumed Cade had no interest in women. Or men. I thought he existed on a plane of asexual indifference, married to his job and devoted only to Ardra.

  The heat of his gaze and the way it knotted me up inside was making me question everything I knew about our association.

  Did he like me?

  Perish the thought.

  I’d long harbored a bit of a schoolgirl crush on Cade Melpomene, but because of his typically distant behavior I had never believed he might return any of my affection. So I stuffed those feelings deep inside me and was mostly able to ignore them. Except when he looked at me like he was right now.

  I picked at my beef, broccoli, and rice concoction and dismissed any notions of Cade as an object of romantic relevance. Thinking about him too much would get me all wound up and turn me into a blithering idiot. Just imagine dating a bad-luck priest. Go ahead, think about it. Talk about a doomed relationship.

  And that was if we ignored the fact none of us were allowed to have romantic relationships, especially not with each other.

  “I could use your help with something,” he said finally.

  Setting my fork down, I pulled myself up higher in my seat, suddenly interested. Work was a safe topic, something I could participate in without feeling weird. Good, yes, tell me all about work.

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t agree until you know what it is.”

  “Okay…”

  “There’s a hotel about an hour from here. Ardra’s been receiving a lot of requests for…retribution against its owner.”

  “Oh?”

  Cade smiled as he pulled out his wallet, leaving enough cash on the table to cover both our meals. I almost protested, wondering if him paying for my meal made this an unintentional date, but then thought better of refusing a free meal.

  “I want you to help me destroy a hotel.”

  Chapter Four

  I wasn’t above doing some property damage.

  I often left a little wreckage in my wake, whether I intended to or not. Such was the case with blowing through towns on the tail of the weather.

  But wreaking some havoc for kicks? That was a distinct pleasure I didn’t often get to indulge in.

  We dropped my car off at the motel, and I paused to check on Fen. A bored fennec could do a lot of damage in an hour’s time, and I didn’t feel like paying off a pricey repair bill. Instead of a disaster, though, I found the tiny fox dozing placidly between the hotel pillows. He didn’t stir when I poked my head through the door, so I left my purse behind and let him be.

  “I can drive,” I offered again. When I’d first made this suggestion back at the restaurant, Cade had laughed at me.

  This time he smiled and said, “I’ve seen you drive. No thank you.”

  Was he implying I wasn’t a good driver? “Rude.”

  “What can I say, Sparky, I like my body parts all where they are. And more importantly, I like all my car’s parts where they are.”

  “I’d be more likely to hurt you than the car. I like your car.”

  I didn’t argue about driving anymore though. He held the passenger door open for me, a surprisingly chivalrous gesture. His coat sleeve hiked up on his arm, showing the faintest glimpse of tattoos at the wrist.

  All chosen cleric had birthmarks. They were symbols of the gods that looked a bit like black-ink tattoos.

  Mine was small and easily hidden under my hair. Cade’s were a different story. I’d only once seen him without a jacket, and even then he’d been wearing long sleeves, so I didn’t know how covered he was, but I knew he had tattoos on both forearms that I suspected went all the way up.

  Anything else I’d need to leave up to my imagination.

  Seeing the sliver of orange, blue, and green on his skin was like accidentally stumbling onto
a secret. It was also strangely intoxicating, tugging at my curiosity and making me want to take the jacket off so I could see what he was hiding.

  He was a puzzle I’d never been interested in assembling before, and now that I wanted to, I was missing the cover.

  Cade cleared his throat, and I realized I’d been staring. I climbed into the Charger’s passenger seat and buckled up.

  Silence swelled in the car as we drove out of town and back onto the winding mountain roads I’d so recently navigated at high speed. I’d like to see Cade call my driving skills into question once he’d witnessed that Formula One-level control.

  Or perhaps he’d heard about said skills from someone else and that was why he didn’t trust me.

  I sank back into the seat, trying to relax, and used the quiet time to glance over at him. In profile he had a warrior’s presence. His jaw was firm and square, dusted with stubble. From this angle, his broken nose had a striking intensity, making him look like a warlord king.

  Chewing on my thumbnail, I decided it might be best if I looked out the window instead.

  “I saw Prescott at the hospital,” Cade said, breaking the tension with his quiet, gravelly voice.

  Husky. That was the word for it.

  “What did Living Dead Boy have to say for himself?”

  Cade exhaled sharply through his nose, in what I could only assume was a stifled laugh. He composed himself quickly and said, “He told me about your altercation.”

  I cast a sideways glance at him, attempting to read his expression. Inscrutable as always. “Did he call it an altercation?”

  That subtle hint of a smirk. He licked his lips, and I died a little.

  “It would be impolite to quote him.”

  It was my turn to laugh, and I did nothing to stifle it. “When have you ever concerned yourself with being polite?”

  Cade turned his attention on me, and the intensity in his dark eyes caused my laughter to hitch in my throat. “You really want to know what he said?”

  “Kind of.”

  “He said, That bitch tried to fry me like a mosquito in a bug trap.”

  I gave the statement a nod of satisfaction and didn’t disagree with it, though I decided I should add, “If I’d meant to kill him, I wouldn’t have missed.”

  Cade grinned openly then, a broad, masculine smile that showed me a flash of his perfect white teeth. A swarm of butterflies took flight inside my belly. I was going to need to blow something up pretty soon, or there was a very real risk I might be turning into a softy.

  “I doubt anyone would miss him.” He dropped one hand from the steering wheel and stretched his arm like he was going to place it on the seat behind me. He seemed to remember my presence and thought better of the move, letting his palm rest flat on his thigh. His fingers twitched nervously. Having me here was throwing him off his rhythm. We were such particular, peculiar people, who spent so much time alone, we sometimes forgot how to behave around others. I could relate to his unease on a visceral level, because I was feeling it myself.

  “Manea might,” I said.

  This brought Cade back to his normal, stone-faced self. I wasn’t sure which of the two visages I preferred.

  “Manea has always been more interested in things than in people. She’d regret losing Prescott’s loyalty, but I don’t think she’d notice the loss of him as a person, do you know what I mean?”

  Of course I knew what he meant. The way he’d described Prescott’s relationship to his god could have just as easily been applied to mine with Seth, or Cade’s with Ardra. We were tools to them, things they relied on but did not love. Gods didn’t know how to love. They only knew how to feed on the love of others.

  Loving and being loved are very different animals.

  I didn’t reply, but in the absence of an answer he had to know what I was thinking.

  “Did he say anything else?” I asked, after the silence drew out long enough to become uncomfortable.

  “I’m not going to take the idol from you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  The thought had crossed my mind when he mentioned Prescott’s name. His sudden appearance would make more sense, then. And his being in the room right next to mine. More importantly it would explain why he was being so nice to me.

  Except, he’d been at the motel first.

  And he was asking for my help.

  I didn’t think he would align himself with Prescott for something as silly as a missing trinket belonging to a goddess Cade didn’t work for.

  “What idol?” I gave him my best innocent face.

  I wasn’t very convincing, judging from his expression.

  “Be careful.” That was it. I suspected there was a great deal more he wanted to say, but he stopped at be careful. It was all the more chilling of a warning because of its brevity.

  If it were up to me, I’d have explained why I’d taken the thing and how none of this was my idea. I was just doing my job.

  But weren’t we all?

  We rounded a bend on the road, and a glittering vista unfolded below us. Lights shimmered brightly against the choppy water of a small lake. Even in the darkness the place had a warm, welcoming glow. I could imagine the type of people who would spend a night in such a retreat. Rich people. Settled people. Families who were warm and loving and actually liked to spend time together in beautiful woodland resorts at the foot of mountains.

  And I was coming to crush their joy.

  I was the Godzilla to their Tokyo.

  “It doesn’t look abandoned to me.”

  “Relax, Sparky. It’s fine.”

  “Cade…”

  “Just trust me, okay?”

  Trust the crack in the sidewalk. Trust the spilled salt. The broken mirror. Sure, Tallulah, trust the black cat.

  Trouble was, I did.

  Chapter Five

  I understood what he meant by trust me as soon as he pulled into the parking lot.

  The whole place was abandoned, in spite of all the light spilling from the building itself. Only one car was there aside from ours—a shiny Mercedes with the vanity plate LSTRSRT.

  Last Resort.

  Cute.

  Rich people were weird.

  Cade had cut the headlights before we arrived—another perk of vintage cars—and we parked far enough from the main building to avoid being seen by anyone inside.

  Clouds were rolling over the lake, coming down from the mountain and settling in low and menacing overhead. Most people couldn’t see clouds at night, they could merely sense their presence because of the added layer of darkness or the absence of stars. Me, I could see them fine, every textured bubble and heavy, rain-filled thunderhead.

  A doozy was headed our way, and I hadn’t asked for it.

  Sometimes a storm was just a storm, but I recalled Sido’s warning that Seth was coming, and knew this wasn’t any old storm. The metallic tang in the air was too familiar and too personal to ignore. Seth wanted my attention, and he wouldn’t leave until he got it.

  I hoped he would lay off long enough for me to get the job with Cade done. If I was going to get a godly scolding, I’d like to have it happen without an audience.

  Cade turned off the car, and we sat in the darkness with the windows rolled down. I took deep breaths of the perfect, peppery, prestorm smell. Whatever else it meant, the coming storm could always calm me.

  “So what’s the deal with this guy?” I fiddled with the zipper on my jacket, desperate for any break in the silence.

  “You know, the usual dirtbag nonsense.”

  “If it were the usual nonsense, Ardra wouldn’t bother. He has to have been a very naughty boy.”

  “Sometimes she just likes to fuck with people.”

  “Don’t they all?”

  In the dark I saw the twist of his smile and the faint gleam of mischief in his eyes. “Be careful. That’s sacrilegious language.”

  “The temple can’t hear me out here.”

  “But the gods
are always listening.”

  I snorted. He wasn’t wrong exactly. Seth could hear and see me whenever he so chose, but he only chose to when it suited him. The rest of the time he didn’t care, so I’d learned not to worry about it. If he was going to peek on me while I showered, there wasn’t much I could do to stop him, and I wasn’t going to stop showering. I applied the same logic to the rest of my life as well.

  “What did he do?” I asked again.

  “We got a lot of requests on this one. He doesn’t pay his staff properly, he steals from his business partners. Cheats on his wife.”

  My nose wrinkled. I especially disliked the unfaithful, and I bet Cade knew it. I’d brought a little hail down on bad husbands and wives in my time.

  “So he’s a prick.”

  “Yes.”

  “Won’t this prick collect a big fat insurance check if we destroy his beautiful resort?” Seemed like kind of a moot point to punish the guy if it was only going to line his pockets.

  “Clever girl. But, no. The resort belongs to his wife, passed down through her family. All the money will go to her.”

  I took another look at the resort. The main building was a beautiful, multistory, chalet-style marvel. It stretched out several hundred feet in each direction, and the lights within gave it an intentionally warm glow. I bet the place was full of exposed wooden beams and furniture made from deer antlers.

  The upper decks were built of intricately laced wood designs, and the planters out front held meticulously trimmed globe cedars. The place was pristine and painfully lovely, far removed from any part of my reality.

  I’d never get to stay in a place like that. Never have a family to take on vacations or have a wine-infused girls’ weekend at the spa. Dreams like that had long since passed for me, so much so I only felt the slightest pang of regret looking at the place.

  Yet I didn’t want to destroy it for being unachievable.