Page 79 of Changeling (The Incubus Saga #2)

“Down the trench?” Alex said, gesturing at the opening to the mine.

A few DO NOT ENTER signs had fallen down or maybe been pulled off to get them out of the way, because there was a clear path into the dark of the mine shaft, welcoming them in.

The hill above the mine and cave system was covered in grass and wildflowers, almost pretty despite the entrance being in disrepair.

Alex and Jim opened up their duffle bags and everyone took out one of the hardhats and an extra flashlight, even though the hats had lights on them as well.

The flashlights were for backup, but they didn’t want to have to go searching for anything in the dark, so everyone took one in hand.

The food and water was only for emergency.

Jim went in first as their resident sidhe detector, and Sasha took the rear.

Nathan stayed up front behind Jim with Alex behind him.

It was almost like going into a cheap haunted house at first, dark and damp and winding, but not really scary since they were traveling in a group. They were also armed.

A few minutes in, Alex whispered from the middle of the train. “So, since we didn’t find any signs of anyone outside, we can assume all the missing people came in here, right?”

“I don’t think it’s fair to assume anything yet,” Jim whispered from the front. They all had their hardhat lights on but, because the shaft was narrow, all any of them could see was the person in front of them, leaving only Jim to see what lay ahead.

“Well, if they did come in here,” Alex pushed on, “what are we thinking happened to them? Because at this point stumbling upon a bunch of bones and bodies would be more comforting than finding nothing.”

In some morbid way Nathan had to agree. An explanation they could see, hunt, and kill was always better than ‘and then they went poof’.

No one said anything for several minutes. Nathan had the pheromone detector out instead of a gun, scanning the cave walls for readings as they went. It didn’t even blip. He put it away.

“What if we hit a dead end from a cave-in?” Sasha called faintly from the back. “Are we just going to call it quits?”

Suddenly, Jim stopped, which meant Nathan almost ran right into him and the pattern continued all the way to the back of the line. “What gives?” Nathan hissed.

“Fork,” Jim said loud enough to be sure all of them heard him. “Right or left?”

“We should keep a consistent pattern,” Alex said. “Always one or the other, so we know how to get back. Hopefully there’ll be an opening soon.”

Nathan consulted the map Iain had given him and suggested left before putting the book away again.

The corridor widened after a while so they were able to pair up, Jim still in the lead with Nathan, and Alex and Sasha behind them.

It made it easier to see ahead of them with their combined light, and after a few minutes they could definitely see what looked like an opening.

“Are you all right?” Nathan heard Alex whisper behind him, which made him immediately turn and look at Sasha. The incubus was holding a hand to his head and squinting his eyes like he had a headache. Nathan had never known Sasha to get headaches.

A groan made Nathan look back to his brother. Jim was holding his head the same way even though he hadn’t stopped walking towards the clearing ahead.

“It’s nothing,” Jim said.

“Let’s keep going,” Sasha echoed.

Nathan started to get a familiar chill up his spine. He didn’t feel strange, and Alex seemed fine, too. That didn’t make sense though. This place was supposed to lure humans.

Something was up ahead in that open part of the caves—there had to be. Nathan pulled his gun. “Jim,” he whispered, slipping up close to speak right next to Jim’s ear, “sense anything you can pin-point yet?”

Jim’s steps started to falter and he held his head more tightly. “Too much…interference from…whatever’s really down here. But there’s something. I know there’s something else. Get ready.”

Quickly, Nathan passed that warning back to the others, worried since being so close to the source was affecting Jim and Sasha so strongly. It seemed like they were in pain but neither of them was willing to stop.

Soon the opening was upon them. It wasn’t until they had almost reached the mouth of it that Nathan realized it wasn’t only their lights illuminating the area but a light from within as well. Someone was in there.

“Nathan!”

Jim’s call came too late. Before Nathan could think to act, Jim had already been propelled into the cave wall by an unseen force and the lights on their hardhats flickered.

“Jim!” he called, but Jim was up a second later and charged into the room. “Wait!” Nathan followed after him, hearing the running feet of the others behind him even as their lights flickered further and went out.

Nathan knew he was right at the mouth where Jim had run in, but he couldn’t see anything.

He felt Alex bump into him from behind, recognizing her smaller frame.

The next second, Nathan and Alex were pushed roughly aside against the opening’s wall as Sasha dove past them, apparently knowing something they didn’t.

Nathan only got the briefest glimpse of flashing red eyes that told him what was happening.

He still couldn’t see more than an inch in front of his face.

“Stay here!” Nathan called to Alex.

She protested loudly after him but he didn’t have time to sit in the dark and wait. He only took a few steps and started pounding on his hardhat to get the light to come back. Nothing happened.

“Jim!” Nathan called, hearing signs of struggle that seemed too far away. He hadn’t gotten enough of a glimpse inside the cavern to know how large it was, but his voice echoed back at him. Jim and Sasha could be anywhere.

Then, as if on cue, Jim signaled to him, shooting off a spark of electricity into the air and lighting up an area several yards away for just a moment.

It was all the time Nathan needed to see that Sasha, half transformed, and Jim were fighting off what appeared to be a possessed woman.

But only one woman. With the amount of missing people and how suddenly the attack had come, Nathan had expected to be swarmed.

He ran ahead, judging the amount of space he had from that one moment of visuals. He stopped and called again, “Jim!” and again Jim shot lightning into the air.

This time Nathan’s eyes caught sight of something else. A shotgun. Jim had dropped it and the gun was lying only a few feet in front of Nathan. It was better than a handgun at close range, and Jim and Sasha seemed too disoriented to easily defeat this thing.

Nathan dove for the shotgun, feeling it in his hands just as the lightning fizzled out again. Distantly, he heard Alex calling after them.

“Jim!” he yelled one last time. It took a moment longer, enough that Nathan was holding his breath when sparks finally flew, but it was all he needed.

Sasha, with his monstrous claws, pushed at the possessed woman just enough to give Nathan a clear shot, and he took it.

The shotgun went off with a deafening resonance throughout the cave and struck the woman somewhere in her midsection.

She didn’t call out, just spasmed and fell down dead in the dark.

Immediately, all of the lights on their hardhats flickered back on, Sasha and Jim’s hats lying on the floor from their struggle.

But in that same moment, the sound of the gunshot echoing down the corridor they had come from turned suddenly into dangerous, daunting rumblings.

The aftershock created an avalanche of rock that began falling down near the entrance and around them in the cavern as well.

Alex scrambled away from her spot by the opening and met the boys in the center of the room, all of them quickly huddling together to shield themselves from the falling rocks.

Sasha unfurled his wings with a great whoosh of air and blanketed them over the top of the group.

Nathan heard the incubus hiss as debris struck him but already the rumbling was starting to stabilize.

A few breathless moments more and it was back to being deathly quiet.

They sat for several minutes, waiting out any possible aftereffects. Slowly, Sasha brought his wings down again and allowed them to fade back into his glamour.

“Shit,” Alex hissed, moving in a sudden dash towards where they had come from. The entire way was blocked now, by how much fallen rock they couldn’t be sure.

Nathan took stock of their surroundings now that they had light again.

This seemed to be the central point to the caving system because there were several other passageways that led off different directions, just as the map had shown.

That gave him hope that they would be able to find some other way out.

Nathan looked over at Jim and Sasha who appeared out of breath but only slightly beaten. Then he remembered the woman. Even in the dark with just a few spaced out sparks of light, Nathan had seen her black eyes, not normal human or dark fae slit, but black—a Shadow Immortal.

He looked at her now, still and lifeless on the ground a few yards away. Moving to her carefully and crouching down, Nathan turned her body over to get a look at her. She was older, late 50s maybe, and dressed like she had just been inside enjoying a good read before the cave called to her.

Plucking her wallet from her pants to see if she matched with any of the missing persons, Nathan’s heart immediately plummeted to his stomach.

Gloria Wilde .

“God damn it. Iain…”

“Nathan…” filtered over a voice from the other side of the room. Nathan wasn’t sure whose it was. The cavern made everything sound strange.

“It was Iain’s mom,” he ground out as he turned back around. “How the hell did she become a Shadow Immortal so…” but he quickly trailed off.

Jim and Sasha were no longer checking over their wounds and catching their breaths. They were holding their heads as if they were in much more pain than they had been in before.

“Hey!” Nathan called, rushing to their sides as it seemed Alex had already. “What’s up? What’s wrong?”

Jim’s pained eyes turned to Nathan first, up on his knees cringing and gripping his hair tightly as if he might pull all of it out. “Iain’s mother…? A Shadow Immortal?”

“They were lured here to make deals?” Sasha cringed as he spoke.

Jim shook his head. “A normal Power Point…couldn’t do this to us. There’s no fae here making deals. It’s just…happening.”

“But if they’re turning into Shadow Immortals without making a deal…

” Nathan caught Alex’s eyes, then Jim and Sasha’s.

Sasha’s eyes were already flashing red, and as Nathan looked into Jim’s, his brother’s began to turn amber.

“This place isn’t luring humans. If it was that, we’d be the ones affected,” he gestured to Alex.

“It’s luring fae . Anyone with enough fae blood.

If this is a Power Point, there could have been countless fae here once.

The town’s probably full of descendants, maybe even… changelings.”

He thought of Iain, that Iain’s mother had been affected too, which meant fae blood ran strongly in his family, at least in his mother if not also in him.

“But we’re both from carrier families,” Alex said. “Shouldn’t it still affect us?”

“It must be stronger in the people of this town, maybe more recently down their bloodlines than ours. But you two can’t become Shadow Immortals,” Nathan said as he looked at Sasha and Jim, still in pain with their eyes flashing. “So what’s it doing to you…?”

There weren’t any other bodies. The other missing people had probably crossed into the Veil already. The cave had triggered their fae blood, lured them away, and changed them. But how?

“No…no, no…” Sasha started to chant. “Jim,” he said, reaching out for Jim and clutching at his arm after a desperate lunge. “You felt it too…didn’t you? What happened to her? You felt it!” His red eyes shimmered fearfully.

Jim shook as Alex held onto him. He pushed her away and shook his head. “There wasn’t anything…human. No human blood left at all. This place amplified her dark fae blood…and burned the rest away…”

Sasha roared at the ceiling causing Nathan to flinch.

The redhead’s fangs glistened in the light from the hardhats, his own hat still off to the side on the ground with Jim’s.

He back-peddled towards the nearest wall, his now blackened fingers—not quite claws—scrapping against the stone.

His eyes darted out at them like he was afraid to stay too close.

A moment later Jim did the same, pushing back against an opposing wall. Neither of them was clutching their heads anymore but their eyes glowed, and Sasha began to morph more and more into his incubus self again.

Even if what Jim had said was true, that this place was some horrible dark fae incubator, it couldn’t do the same to Jim and Sasha, could it? It couldn’t really burn their humanity away…

“No!” Jim screamed when Alex moved to go near him. “St-stay away from me. I…I don’t want to hurt you. God, I…I can’t stop it, you have to stay away.”

“Stay away, please …” Sasha said mournfully to Nathan when he tried to move toward him. “Please, you have…you have to get away from us.”

“Go!” Jim yelled. “Find another way out. I…I can’t…I can’t stop .” He keeled over onto his side like he was fighting every inch of his body. Sasha crumbled as well, his wings sprouting once more from his back as he left angry white marks in the stone from his claws.

“Go!”

“Run!”

Nathan felt frozen in place. He had trapped them by firing the shotgun. It was his fault. What did it matter if Iain’s mother was already a mindless slave, he had still shot her. And now Jim and Sasha were…were what?

“Nathan!”

There wasn’t time to think. There wasn’t time to mourn.

Alex was standing at a loss, frantic as she looked between the two men that were changing and howling in agony, just as Nathan was looking between them too, wanting to help; knowing he couldn’t.

He did the only thing possible. He listened.

He grabbed Alex by her wrist, pulled her after him against any protest or resistance towards the nearest open corridor, and ran.