AllFreeNovel
Share Us
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.
