I let out a shaky breath, and before buckling myself in I reached into the back once more and got Fen out of his carrier. He’d be safer in my arms than rolling around inside a plastic box. As soon as I was belted in, the little fennec burrowed into the crook of my arm, his entire body shaking with fear. So much for the big, tough-guy act he usually put on.
“It’s okay, buddy,” I whispered.
Cade hammered his foot down on the gas, and we shot forward, the body of the car shimmying slightly to let us know structural integrity was not at one hundred percent. But it was still moving, and for the time being that was all anyone in this car cared about.
Two more rocks, at least three feet wide through the middle, crashed down in front of us, blocking each lane of the road.
“Fuck.” Cade reacted with hair-trigger speed, yanking the wheel left and sending us onto the gravel edge once again. Beyond the guardrail was a sharp drop down into pure blackness. It might have been five feet or five hundred, but I didn’t want to find out.
He got past the rocks, only scraping my car door against one, and then steered us back into the center of the highway.
The Ourea have a taste for blood.
Badb had said that before giving me the bracelet, and now her words of warning were coming to fruition, because who else could be raining down rocks on us from the mountains?
“It’s the Ourea,” I said.
“No shit.”
He had evidently given up any hope of thinking this was all coincidence. His body was tense, muscles rigid as he fixed his eyes on the road. I was afraid to say anything else out of fear it might distract him and we’d end up super dead as a result. Bracelet or not, I wasn’t counting on getting out of this situation in one piece.
We were being attacked by the nine mountain goddesses—well, probably just one of them because if it was all nine we’d already be red smears on the asphalt—and we were on one of the longest stretches of mountainous road in the United States.
No problem.
There was no easy way out of this unless we learned to fly.
A mammoth boulder crashed down in front of us, and I screamed, grabbing hold of the wheel and jerking it right just as Cade did the same. We careened at breakneck speed towards the mountain wall, smaller stones and debris crunching under our tires as more bits of rock pelted down on the roof of the car like hail.
Hail.
My brain started churning in high gear. What could I do to stop this? Rain couldn’t wash away boulders, and it couldn’t build a wall between us and the Ourea who was assaulting us.
But it could make us harder to see.
I didn’t know much about the mountain goddesses, but they were primordial deities, not like those who took mortal form. There was a chance they might not be able to see us through a good downpour.
I let go of the steering wheel, relinquishing control of the car to Cade, who was swearing a blue streak under his breath. He was going slow now to avoid driving us full speed into a falling rock. There was no logical answer, because either slow or fast we’d probably end up as pulp.
Snuggling Fen closer to me, I shut my eyes and tried to steady my breathing. Calling the rain wasn’t as hard as channeling lightning, but it still took focus, and this was hardly what I would qualify as a meditative environment. That’s where Fen came in. As much of a pain in the ass as he could be, he was still my familiar. Which meant he was a direct source of power straight from Seth, and I could use him to amplify my own strength.
It was only on rare occasions I took advantage of this ability, because it was unnerving to leach power out of another living creature. I felt extra guilty doing it after experiencing how it felt when Seth did it to me. Was that all I was to him, a familiar?
I’d never taken time to consider it before, but that’s exactly what we were. We went by different names—clerics, priests, disciples, earthly hands—but it all meant the same thing in the end. We were their pawns and nothing more. Pets.
I gritted my teeth and pushed the thought away. Spite was the least helpful thing to be feeling right then, especially when I needed to tap into my god-given gifts.
When my mind was blank, I imagined the rain, picturing sheets of relentless, driving water pouring across the highway, blotting out visibility. I thought of the sound rain made pattering against a sidewalk and the way it felt beading against my exposed skin.
I immersed myself mentally in every aspect of rain—the smell, the taste, the way it looked.
Soon the sound was real, a light patter of droplets against the windshield. Fen had gone still in my arms, no longer trembling, just taking soft, gentle breaths like I’d put him to sleep. I opened my eyes and saw huge spots of water dotting the windows. Soon there were too many to see the individual drops, and the water was pouring down on us ceaselessly.
Cade activated the wipers and leaned over the wheel. Interspersed with the sound of the storm were hard tings of rocks hitting the roof.
“Turn off the headlights,” I instructed.
“Are you out of your mind?”