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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.”
