Chapter 41 – Traffic Laws Do Not Apply to Leviathans

【Thalia’s POV】

The highway was an inconvenience.

I stood on the cracked asphalt, my bare feet touching pavement that immediately frosted over in intricate spirals. The facility was behind me, a smoldering wreck of failing containment protocols and panicked alarms. None of it mattered.

Kai was ahead.

Moving away from me.

With her.

I took a step forward and the world bent around me, reality compressing like an accordion until the mile between me and my destination became a single stride. Space was a suggestion I no longer felt obligated to follow.

Another step.

The air around me dropped forty degrees in an instant, my aura bleeding out in waves of cosmic cold that turned moisture into ice crystals. A flock of starlings flew overhead, their cheerful chirping cutting through the late afternoon.​

They dropped.

One by one they fell from the sky, their tiny bodies flash-frozen mid-flight, hitting the pavement like hailstones. I didn’t spare them a glance. Collateral damage was inevitable when the Void walked among mortals.

The traffic light ahead exploded.

Glass and sparking wires rained down as my presence overloaded the electrical system, too much concentrated power in too small a space. The intersection went dark, cars screeching to confused stops.

I walked through it all.

Another step, another mile compressed. The highway stretched ahead, a ribbon of asphalt cutting through the landscape. Somewhere on this road was a beat-up Volkswagen carrying the only person in any dimension who mattered.

And the trickster goddess who’d stolen him.

My hair writhed around my shoulders, each strand moving with predatory intent. My dress shifted between solid and translucent, the fabric responding to my emotional state. Right now it was dark, nearly black, the color of space between stars.​

I was done pretending to be manageable.

The temperature continued to drop. Frost spread across the road in my wake, creating patches of black ice that would cause accidents for hours. I didn’t care. The humans would adapt or they wouldn’t.

My focus was singular.

Find Kai.

Remove obstacles.

Reclaim what was mine.

Movement ahead caught my attention.

A blockade materialized across the highway, vehicles arranged in a defensive formation that would’ve been impressive if I’d been anything resembling stoppable. Military trucks, civilian cars, even a tank positioned in the center.

The Cult of the Silent Void.

I recognized their banners immediately, black fabric emblazoned with symbols that were supposed to represent divine indifference but mostly just looked like someone had spilled ink. They’d set up a perimeter, armed cultists in tactical gear standing at attention.​

Kai’s pets.

A figure stepped forward from the formation. Young, maybe twenty-five, wearing body armor that had been spray-painted with religious iconography. He held a radio in one shaking hand.

“Stop right there!”

His voice cracked on the command, betraying his fear. He was trying so hard to sound authoritative, to project confidence in the face of something his primitive brain recognized as apex predator.

Adorable.

I kept walking.

“I said stop! You are trespassing on sacred ground claimed by the Order of the Silent Void! State your business or face divine retribution!”

Divine retribution from humans. The irony was almost funny enough to make me smile. Almost.

I took another step, space compressing. I was suddenly fifty feet closer without appearing to have moved faster.

The lieutenant’s face went pale.

“Fire a warning shot!”

The tank’s barrel swiveled, the mechanical whine of hydraulics barely audible over the sound of my aura crackling through the air. There was a moment of stillness, that breath before violence where anything could still happen.

The tank fired.

The shell screamed toward me, a projectile designed to punch through armor plating and explode in a shower of shrapnel. It would’ve been devastating against anything bound by conventional physics.

I raised one hand.

The shell stopped six inches from my palm, hanging in mid-air like reality had paused. I could feel the heat radiating from it, smell the propellant, sense the potential energy locked inside waiting to detonate.

Potential was such a flexible concept.

I closed my fingers around the shell and it changed, matter rearranging itself at the molecular level according to my will. Metal became organic, explosives became fragrance, destruction became beauty.

A black rose bloomed in my palm.

Perfect petals, dark as the Void itself, with frost crystallizing along the edges. I held it up to the fading light, admiring my work. The transformation had been effortless, reality bending because I’d politely asked and reality knew better than to refuse.

I lowered the rose and kept walking.

The cultists didn’t move.

They stood frozen in formation, watching me approach with expressions ranging from terror to religious awe. Some of them had dropped their weapons. One was crying silently, tears freezing on his cheeks.

The lieutenant tried again, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Please. We’re protecting our god’s path. You can’t pass.”

I walked past him like he was made of smoke.

He didn’t try to stop me physically, didn’t reach out to grab my arm or block my way. Some instinct deeper than training told him that touching me would be a terminal mistake.

Smart boy.

The cultists parted around me like water around a stone, creating a corridor through their blockade without a single command being given. They moved on pure survival instinct, their bodies understanding what their conscious minds refused to accept.

I was not something they could fight.

I was barely something they could perceive without going mad.

I passed the tank, trailing my fingers along the barrel as I went. Frost formed instantly, creeping across the metal in fractal patterns. By the time I’d cleared the blockade the entire vehicle would be encased in ice, a monument to mortal hubris.

Behind me I heard someone sobbing.

Someone else was praying, rapid whispered words in a language that predated their cult by centuries. They were begging for mercy, for understanding, for their god to protect them from the monster wearing a woman’s face.

Kai would protect them.

That’s the only reason they were still breathing.

They belonged to him in some strange mortal way, followers of a cult his father had dumped on him like an unwanted inheritance. Harming them would upset Kai, create complications I didn’t need.​

So I let them live.

But they would remember this moment for the rest of their short lives, the night an ancient horror walked through their defensive line and treated them like they were less than air.

I hoped the memory kept them up at night.

The blockade fell away behind me. I returned my focus to the road ahead, to the connection I could feel thrumming in my chest like a second heartbeat.

Kai.

He was close now, maybe three miles ahead. I could sense his location with the precision of cosmic GPS, his existence a beacon that called to something fundamental in my nature.

I compressed space again, ate another mile in a single step.

The highway was nearly empty here, most traffic having been diverted by the cult’s blockade. Perfect. Fewer witnesses meant fewer complications when I caught up to that ridiculous car.

Movement in the distance.

A vehicle, small and pathetic, struggling up a slight incline. The Volkswagen. I’d know that wheezing engine anywhere, had memorized the exact frequency of its mechanical distress.

I stopped walking.

This required a different approach, something more dramatic than simply appearing beside the car. Loki would expect teleportation, would have contingencies prepared for standard pursuit tactics.

No.

I needed impact.

I needed Kai to see me and understand immediately that leaving without me had been a mistake of catastrophic proportions.

I closed my eyes and reached for the connection between us, the invisible thread that tied my existence to his. It was always there, humming with potential, waiting for me to pull it taut.

I pulled.

My consciousness split, part of me remaining anchored to this spot on the highway while another part projected forward, riding the connection like a zipline across space.

The projection was perfect, indistinguishable from my physical form. Every detail rendered with flawless precision, from the way my dress moved in the wind to the cold light in my eyes.

I opened my projected eyes.

The Volkswagen was right in front of me, maybe thirty yards away. I could see Kai through the windshield, his hands on the wheel, his expression showing the first signs of alarm.

And beside him.

Loki.

The trickster goddess was laughing, her head thrown back in delight, her hand on Kai’s shoulder like she had any right to touch him. She looked comfortable, relaxed, happy.

In my seat.

Wearing that ridiculous schoolgirl disguise like Kai would fall for something so transparent.

Sitting where I should be sitting.

The jealousy hit me like a physical blow, a wave of possessive fury so intense the temperature around my projection dropped another twenty degrees. Frost spread across the asphalt, creating a circle of winter in the middle of summer evening.

Loki’s laughter cut off.

She’d seen me in the mirror, her expression shifting from manic joy to pure panic in a fraction of a second.

Good.

Be afraid.

Kai hit the brakes.

The Volkswagen’s tires screamed against pavement, rubber burning as the car decelerated hard. The vehicle fishtailed slightly, struggling for traction on frost-slicked road.

I stood perfectly still in the center of his lane.

One hand raised, palm out, in the universal gesture for stop.

My dress billowed around me in a wind that existed only in the space I occupied, my hair floating in defiance of gravity. The setting sun backlighted me, turned my silhouette into something biblical.

An angel of vengeance.

A goddess scorned.

A woman who was absolutely done with being left behind.

The car stopped three feet from where I stood.

Kai stared at me through the windshield, his eyes wide, his mouth slightly open. I could see the exact moment recognition hit, the instant he understood that I was no longer playing by facility rules or containment protocols.

I smiled.

It wasn’t the gentle smile I used during our visits, the one designed to be alluring without being threatening. This was the smile of something ancient and inevitable, the expression of entropy watching a star collapse.

This was the smile that said checkmate.

Kai’s date was over.

Mine was just beginning.