Thunder Road (Rain Chaser Book 1)

by Sierra Dean

  Too many words. Woozy.

  I closed my eyes, and he slapped me again. “I’m not an expert or anything, but I think if you go to sleep, there’s a chance you’ll die.”

  “Tired.”

  “Yeah, well, no offense, but that’s not the kind of sleep you should be having right about now. Do you think you can put your hand on this?” He took hold of my hand and pressed it against my ribs.

  I made a small whimpering noise but pushed down, keeping the wound closed as best I could. Leo lifted my head and wrapped his arm behind my shoulders, then hooked his other arm underneath my knees. Without so much as a grunt of effort, he picked me up easily from the floor.

  “Fuck.” I buried my face in the crook of his arm, cursing a string of never-before-heard swears. If I thought holding the wound was bad, it was nothing compared to the pain of being hoisted up with a huge hole between your ribs.

  “Sorry.” He even sounded a bit contrite. “Just please don’t die, okay? I’m pretty sure if my dad is who you say he is, he’ll kill me for it.”

  Shows what he knew.

  I passed out before we hit the main floor, regaining consciousness only briefly in little snippets, enough to see streetlights passing through a car window, and then the bright fluorescent bulbs that indicated a sterile space.

  If this was what the afterlife looked like, I think I preferred the version in my dream.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  When I came to, I was freezing.

  I blinked against the harsh light from the overhead bulbs but found no reprieve when I rolled onto my side. Sunlight was blazing through a nearby window. Tubes and needles I hadn’t noticed before tugged at my arm when I moved. Guiltily I returned to my original position.

  A machine next to me sounded out a steady rhythm: beep, beep, beep, you’re alive. I raised my arm to cover my eyes from the brightness, and the tubes made the small motion an effort. Grabbing a fistful of the plastic lines, I started yanking them only to have my desperate action abruptly stopped.

  Strong hands eased my fingers off the medical equipment, and a lovely, deep, familiar voice said, “Nope.”

  I turned my face and let out a small gasp of relief, tears springing to my eyes unexpectedly.

  “Cade,” I breathed.

  He released my hands and settled back into the chair next to my bed. I took a quick account of the room, confirming I was in a hospital. The area around me was Spartan and clean. I wore a flimsy hospital gown, and a thin blanket was tucked in around me, providing very little in the way of warmth.

  I had apparently warranted my own private room, however, because I was alone with Cade. No sign of Leo.

  I took hold of his hand back before he could hide it from me, squeezing it tight as if to confirm for myself he was really here. The pain in my ribs should have been enough to prove this was real and not a dream, but I wanted to feel the rough skin of his palm under my fingertips.

  He looked exhausted, with purple circles under his eyes and several days’ worth of stubble darkening his cheeks. But with his eyes on me, his gloom seemed to be held at bay, because when he smiled, even the slight gesture held real warmth.

  “How about you don’t do that again, deal?” he whispered, squeezing my hand.

  He rested his other hand on my thigh, absently stroking up and down.

  “Which part?” My eyes fluttered shut briefly, and I pretended we weren’t in this room and I’d never left that motel in Shreveport. Things would be so different if I hadn’t made the choices I’d made that night.

  Gods, had that only been yesterday? I’d lived a thousand lives since then.

  “The part where you make deals with Hecate. Or where you get stabbed.” When I opened my eyes, he was staring at me. “The part where you leave me.”

  “Okay. Deal.”

  Cade freed his hand from mine, and I let it go but mourned its absence. He stroked my hair back from my face, tucking loose strands behind my ears and smoothing my bangs off my forehead. “I mean, I wasn’t really worried. I know you’re tough. But Fenrir wouldn’t believe a word I said. That runt has trust issues.”

  His grin was so perfect it hurt me to look right at him. I used to think he had the kind of face that was only handsome when he was serious. Seeing him now, smiling, I knew how wrong I’d been.

  I touched his cheek, tracing the fading scars where I’d hurt him in the blast from the hotel explosion. “Bet you didn’t know what you were getting yourself into when you agreed to come on this little trip.” Every word hurt more than the last, reminding me why I was in this room to begin with.

  “I had a pretty good idea that you and I might stir up some trouble.”

  Speaking of trouble... “Where’s Le—”

  I coughed trying to say his name, which turned into more coughing, and I doubled over in the bed, tears blurring my vision as I tried to get my breath back, but it seemed like it was always just escaping me.

  Cade vanished from my side, and I wanted to call to him, but I couldn’t make the words come out.

  He returned moments later with a doctor and nurse in tow. Their uniforms bore the symbol of Asclepius, a snake wrapped around a rod. Asclepius was one of the rare gods who did not have a chosen earthly representative. People chose to serve him and wore his mark willingly. It made me trust doctors and nurses all the more for it, because they weren’t forced to help people, they chose to. Asclepius must have been quite the benevolent deity to inspire such worship.

  Of course, he was one of the few that handed the power of life and death directly to his followers.

  The nurse was a middle-aged Asian woman with streaks of silver hair trailing into her ponytail. She was all business, straightening me out in bed and rattling off some information to the doctor as she checked the tubes in my arms to make sure I hadn’t pulled anything loose.

  The doctor, leaving my immediate well-being in the capable hands of the nurse—her nametag said Rosemary—came to stand next to me. He was handsome in an authority-figure way, serious and businesslike. His red hair was wavy, and he wore dark-framed glasses that loaned his youngish face a bit more gravitas. The stitching on his lab coat above Asclepius’s mark said Dr. Shea.

  “I believe you promised to keep her from getting too excited, Mr. Melpomene,” he chided Cade. The priest lingered by the door, a guilt-stricken expression on his face.

  Again, I tried to speak, but when I opened my mouth, I continued to cough.

  “Lay still, Miss Corentine. I’m going to need you to calm yourself.”

  Rosemary injected a clear liquid into one of the tubes running to my arm, and I felt a brief sensation of coolness under the skin, then a woozy heaviness all through my body. Everything started to move in slow motion. Darkness stole over me and once again I was pulled under.

  I woke up alone.

  The pain in my chest was still present but had lessened slightly, enough that I felt comfortable trying to prop myself up on my elbows. Someone had turned off the overhead lights—Seth bless them—and outside the sun appeared blotted out by a layer of thick clouds. It was bright enough I could assume it was daytime, but a storm, she was abrewing.

  People passed by my room in both directions, always moving like they were in a hurry to get somewhere, but none of them stopping to look in on me. I was grateful for the momentary reprieve, because it gave me a much-needed opportunity to collect my thoughts.

  This was bad.

  Mormo knew where Leo was, which meant we were out of time to keep Seth’s son hidden from Manea. I’d missed my window to deliver him safely. Once we tried to leave the sanctuary of the hospital, we’d be lucky to make it ten feet before Manea’s goons swooped in and finished what Mormo started in the apartment.

  This whole situation was fucked seven ways from Sunday, and I honestly didn’t know what to do next. I had a little time to work it out, though, since it was unlikely they’d let me out of this hospital bed any time soon.

  Since I was alone I took
a moment to peek down the front of my paper-thin gown to investigate the place Mormo had stabbed me. Bandages encircled my waist, with a large pad stuck down over the area where the blade had entered. I took a few test breaths and found I could breathe okay without coughing, but the deeper I inhaled the more the wound hurt, like my lungs were pushing against it from the inside and the hole was widening with each breath.

  Maybe no marathons for awhile.

  Cade’s military-cut jacket was draped over the back of the chair beside me, so he couldn’t have gone far. A garbage can near the room’s entrance had several empty coffee cups in it.

  I wonder how long it had been since he slept.

  How long had I been here?

  Where was Leo?

  A million different questions swirled through my head, and with each new one a half dozen more popped up. All I knew for sure was that nothing was going to get finished if I was stuck in a hospital.

  I was about to rip out my IV when Dr. Shea came into the room, turning the lights on as he entered. He stared at me carefully as I froze. It was obvious what I’d been trying to do, but neither of us spoke. I let the line drop and sat back against my pillow.

  “Hello.” I smiled. Fake casual, pretending like nothing had happened.

  “I see you’re feeling better.” Dr. Shea approached the bed and took my pulse manually, then gave the monitors connected to me a glance, as if simply wanting to confirm something he already knew. “Tallulah, I understand you were stabbed.”

  “Did the big gaping knife wound give it away?”

  Shea’s mouth formed a thin line, which I took to be his version of a smile. “You were incredibly lucky. The knife appears to have entered your lung, but something sealed the wound almost immediately. You managed to avoid a pneumothorax.”

  “Pneumo…” I raised a brow at him.

  “A collapsed lung,” he explained. “Typically a wound in the location where you were struck would result in a lung decompressing, and we would have needed to put in a chest tube to help get your lung back in functioning order. But as I mentioned, something we have never seen before kept the puncture wound from causing the damage it should have.”

  Point one for Mormo’s enchanted blade.

  Judging by the stern expression on Shea’s face, there was more. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, squinting his eyes closed. For a moment he looked impossibly young, and then he put the glasses back on and his aura of authority was restored.

  “What else?” I asked.

  “The reason I requested your friend try to keep you calm is that I don’t know how long you will be able to keep your lung from collapsing. There’s a condition called spontaneous pneumothorax that can sometimes impact those who have previously had a lung collapse. My concern is that whatever protected you initially may wear off before your lung has a chance to heal, and you will suffer incredibly as a result.”

  “Oh.” Was that all? Sure, okay. Suffering! Torturous pain! Must be a day ending in Y. “Respectfully, the pain I endured getting stabbed was probably worse than anything my lungs can do to me.”

  As if to spite me for my hubris, I took a breath and my lungs pressed against the open wound. I let out a grunt, and Shea gave me his most doctorly I told you so face.

  Yeah, yeah.

  “So what are you saying?”

  “Mr. Melpomene didn’t tell me the reasons that brought you both here, nor did the young man who brought you in, but I’ve seen your mark. I’ve looked at your eyes.”

  I grimaced but didn’t say anything.

  “I know what it is to serve a god, Miss Corentine. I know the compulsion to do their will.”

  “In your case, your god’s will is a bit easier to swallow most of the time.”

  “Yes and no. Not everyone is meant to live. Part of my duty is to accept that.” Reflexively his hand went to the stitched mark on his coat. “Just like you may need to accept that your job here is done.”

  I narrowed my eyes, glaring at him with the closest thing I could muster to toughness. “You serve your god out of choice. I serve my god out of necessity. There’s a difference.”

  “If you continue what you’re doing, you might die.”

  “We’re all going to die eventually. You know that better than anyone.” I pushed myself up higher in the bed, pretending like it wasn’t absolute agony with every inch. “I have a job to do.”

  “That little coughing fit of yours? That’s a sign of lung collapse. You’re toeing a fine line here. And what’s more, the substance that has sealed your lung…like a tar? It seems to have damaged many of the organs around it as it entered you. Even your skin shows marks of serious scarring beyond what we would typically see in that kind of an injury. What I’m saying, but you don’t seem to be hearing, is that you nearly died, and if you don’t go back to your temple, you will die. Is that clear?”

  I grabbed hold of the IV tube and tugged it out. Shea looked like he wanted to protest, but instead he stepped back and let me swing my legs over the side of the bed.

  “Death already has it in for me, Dr. Shea. I’d rather not wait here and see if she finds me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Where’s Leo?” I was struggling to pull my shirt over my head as Cade re-entered the room.

  Dr. Shea—gods bless him—had tried to talk me back into bed, but he didn’t force me, and when it became clear I wasn’t listening, he left. I thought perhaps he might rat me out to Cade, but given the look on Cade’s face right now it was safe to say this was coming as a surprise to him.

  “Sparky, what the fuck are you doing?”

  I succeeded in tugging the shirt down, eternally grateful he’d missed the abysmal ballet that had been the fight with my bra. When I bent over to pick up my pants, a wave of nausea hit me, and I had to brace myself against the doorframe, doubled over, trying to chase the niggling pain and lightheadedness away. Dr. Shea’s voice was in the back of my head telling me I wouldn’t make it out of the hospital if I kept this up.

  Whatever. What did professional doctors know about health anyway?

  I stood up straight again, and Cade was right next to me, setting his cup of cafeteria coffee on the floor as he came to offer me a supportive arm. “You should be in bed.”

  “And you should be in Nevada. Or in New York City crashing the stock exchange. Neither of us should be here, yet here we are.”

  “I didn’t mean it in a broad-strokes sense. I meant you’re seriously hurt and you should be in bed. The doctor can’t have sanctioned this.” He started looking around as if hoping he would spot Dr. Shea and they could both talk some sense into me.

  “He didn’t try to wrestle me back down.”

  “Would that work?”

  “No.” I slipped on one leg of my jeans, cursing whoever invented skinny denim, then rested my head against the wall before attempting the second leg.

  After a long, tense pause, he asked, “Would you like some help getting dressed?”

  I stared at the white paint on the wall, practicing slow breathing through my nostrils. My pride was already in tatters given the fact I couldn’t get my pants on all at once like a grown adult. What harm could it do to get some assistance at this point?

  “Okay.”

  Cade knelt on the floor in front of me and turned me to face him, placing his face roughly level with my crotch.

  I was wrong. This could get less dignified.

  His hands trailed down my leg haltingly, almost like he was hesitating with every gesture. He eased his fingers behind my knee and lifted, letting it bend reflexively as he pressed lightly at the joint.

  Suddenly the wave of awkwardness was gone, replaced with an altogether unexpected sensation. Lust.

  He stared up at me as he guided my toes into the pant leg and tugged the cuff past my heel. When he looped his thumbs into the waistband of my pants and began to pull them up, my breath hitched.

  “Are you okay?” He paused, his brow tighteni
ng in concern. I wanted to press my thumb on the place between his eyes where a permanent scowl line had formed. I wanted to scrape my fingernails across the fresh stubble on his jaw.

  More than anything I wanted us to be in a situation where he could be taking my pants off instead of helping me put them back on.

  With a quavering sigh I said, “I’m fine.” I braced one hand on his shoulder, nails gripping the firm muscle. It was the one touch I’d allow myself, since I could play it off as merely needing the balance. The truth of the matter was I was just that desperate to put my hands on him.

  He rose slowly, so slowly he had to be doing it to torture me, pulling my pants up one inch at a time. When he got to my hips, he needed to step closer, his arms coming around my waist, fingertips tracing the elastic band of my underwear, then he pulled the pants over my ass and his hands returned to the front.

  Cade’s gaze never left mine as he fastened the zipper of my jeans and deftly buttoned them. His face was inches from mine, and my heart was thrumming. I was having such a hard time breathing I thought I might collapse my damn lung from desire alone.

  Sexy.

  Resting my hands on his chest, I hesitated, then pushed him away, scared to trust myself if I was breathing the same air as him. I’d never been dressed so erotically before, and I could barely stand long enough to enjoy it.

  “Where’s Leo?” I asked again, coming back to the most important topic.

  “Downstairs. Flirting with nurses. I think he’s also stealing money from the vending machines somehow?” He offered me his hand and guided me to the bed, where I leaned against the frame, wincing.

  I was glad he didn’t suggest I get in bed again, because I’d have seriously considered it right then.

  “Watch your wallet around him.” I motioned for him to hand me my boots. He grabbed them and set his chair in front of me, quietly setting about putting them on for me without being asked.

  “He’s an interesting guy.” Cade cradled my calf as he slipped the boot onto my left foot. I looked up at the ceiling, trying to pretend the situation was different in so many ways. The only thing I wouldn’t change was the lingering way he touched me, like he was taking a tiny bit of pleasure with each motion.