Page 175 of Mud

“Talk to me, Rose,” he then said. “Tell me where you were. Tell me what you found. Just talk.”

“I don’t…I don’t know,” I whispered, raising my head to watch him pressing those lips up my other thigh.

Taland raised his head, too, and met my eyes. “I thought you said you had a plan. Or was that a lie?”

A plan.

Fucking hell, I did have a plan, didn’t I?

“I…I do.” A bell rang in my ears and I was reminded of everything happening around me again, only this time it all had a lot more color.

“What’s the plan, sweetness?” asked Taland, his mouth still dangerously close to my pussy.

I knew that if he went there again, I’d be a goner.

“The plan?—”

A loud noise cut me off, a noise that made my heart skip one too many beats and made me sit up with a jolt.

It was thunder.

The room spun and Taland was already on his feet looking out the broken window, and I followed. We were both naked and my heart was thundering as much as that gray cloud that had taken over the sky of Night City.

A cloud—a gray cloud that hadn’t been there before.

A smile tugged at my lips. Holy shit, that was a storm waiting to come alive.

“What the hell is that?” Taland said, and I moved around him to get closer to the window just to make sure I was seeing right, that I wasn’t imagining it.

“That’s my plan,” I whispered, in awe of the fact that it had actually worked.

Goddess, it had actually worked!

“That’s your plan?” Taland was next to me, shaking his head, looking outside, too. “Thunder?”

“A hailstorm,” I told him. “I bought a hailstorm cloud from the Cloud Maker shop, and Refiq is a halfling so he could, technically speaking, prepare one of his clouds for the sky. He said he’d need time to do it, but I honestly didn’t think he’d make it. It looks like he did.”

Refiq had fucking made it.

Another thunder vibrated throughout me.

Wait a minute…

“A hailstorm?” Taland said.

“Yes, a hailstorm. To kill the birds. Naturally,” I said, looking at the rest of the darkness over Night City. “Nobody said we needed deadhumanbodies—just dead bodies. Where is the roundabout, Taland?”

Because that cloud was dark and angry, and it didn’t look like it was moving in the direction I was sure the roundabout was.

Suddenly, Taland grabbed my chin and turned me to face him. He looked…surprised.Shockedeven.

“That’s fucking brilliant.”

I would have blushed any other day.

“It’s not moving, though,” I whispered. “Look at it—the roundabout is over there, isn’t it?” I pointed west, andTaland nodded. “The storm was supposed to hit the roundabout because if it kills the birds and they fall on top of buildings…” I shook my head.

“We can’t get to them because of the dragons,” Taland finished for me.

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