Page 85 of Changeling (The Incubus Saga #2)

Nathan had his gun steady and aimed in moments, allowing the door to close behind him with an unsuitably soft click.

“Get the fuck away from my brother.”

The redhead’s back went instantly rigid, his movements stilling as he pulled away from the body beneath him. Jim, however, didn’t seem to notice Nathan and whimpered at being neglected, his hands still pawing at the smooth marble chest, searching out some way to reconnect.

Although Sasha’s body had indeed tensed, he did not seem upset when his eyes turned and looked at Nathan with an unnatural light. He ignored Jim’s eager hands pulling and pleading for him to continue as a cruel grin curved at his mouth like the twist of a knife.

“Nathan,” purred Sasha’s voice from damp and reddened lips, “did you want to join us?”

“I said,” Nathan growled again, making a cautious half-circle around the bed to bring him closer to Jim, “get the fuck off of him.”

As Nathan risked a glance at his brother, he saw Jim finally start to cease his reaching for Sasha, his face twisting in recognition and growing horror as he looked more closely at the redhead and realized the position he was in as if he had been in a daze.

His eyes were glossy and unfocused when he turned to look at Nathan in mute shock.

“Jim, come here,” Nathan commanded. He kept his gun on Sasha with one hand while the other reached for Jim.

The older Grier looked as though he was going to be sick. “N-Nathan…?” Jim slurred—not like he was exhausted, but as if he’d been drinking, or drugged.

“Hn,” Sasha’s voice huffed, pulling Nathan’s attention back on him.

“Just like that? You didn’t even pause to think about it, Nathan .

You just point your gun at me, all the faith in the world still resting in dear, big brother Jim.

What,” he said with that wicked smirk, “don’t you have any faith in me anymore? ”

“Fuck off,” Nathan sneered, both hands on his gun again as he took a threatening step closer to the bed.

“You’re not Sasha. Sasha wouldn’t do this.

And totally blitzed or drugged or whatever happened while I was gone, Jim would never mojo Sasha into bed, even as a fucking accident from too much to drink.

So you get away from him right now and tell me who you are and what the fuck you’ve done with my incubus. ”

As soon as the imposter grinned wider and stepped a foot off the bed obligingly, Nathan reached a hand forward to snatch Jim up off the bed too. Jim’s limbs weren’t cooperating though, and he toppled into Nathan. Nathan was able to keep them both steady and on their feet by sheer will.

The thing wearing Sasha’s face looked so damn smug it made Nathan want to shoot it out of spite.

He shouldn’t have left Jim and Sasha alone, he knew better than that.

Something must have happened while he was gone; maybe the real Sasha went off on his own and this look-alike took his place, he didn’t know, but he knew better than to be fooled.

“I-I’m…s-sorry, Nathan,” Jim mumbled into Nathan’s shoulder, shaking and barely able to stand even with Nathan’s support, “I didn’t…mean to. I’d never…I…I-I don’t…know what happened.”

“It’s okay, Jim,” Nathan hushed him, only one hand holding the gun again so he could keep an arm around Jim’s waist and hold him up. He hugged Jim against him. “Where is Sasha?” Nathan demanded of the imposter.

Sasha’s voice chuckled in malicious amusement.

Nathan tightened his finger on the trigger. “ Where is he? ”

“You’re looking at him.”

Holding Jim tighter, Nathan managed to take just one small step closer. “You asshole. Don’t think I’ll hesitate to shoot you.”

“Oh? Go ahead,” Sasha’s voice taunted. “But I think we both know this is the one body you won’t shoot.”

Nathan faltered. While trying to play out scenarios in his head and think of a further plan of action, he suddenly felt dead weight in his arms and almost got taken right to the floor.

He looked to Jim and saw that his brother’s eyes were fluttering like he was close to passing out.

Nathan tried to keep his gun pointed at the bastard with them, but he had to check on Jim.

He used his free hand to look more closely at Jim’s eyes, barely able to hold Jim up anymore.

His pupils were blown.

“What did you do to him?” Nathan shifted Jim in his arms to better hold him and looked back to the man with Sasha’s face.

“Well, I knew he couldn’t sense me, but that didn’t mean I wanted to put up with all those other…

more annoying abilities. That would have just been careless.

” Sasha’s pants had been pulled up but they were still unbuttoned and unzipped, left open to reveal red boxer briefs beneath, like this stranger couldn’t be bothered to do them up again.

Nathan wanted to rush the bastard, but he didn’t know for sure what he was dealing with.

Before he could say anything else, Jim suddenly dropped, fully collapsing in his arms so that the weight of Jim brought him straight to the floor hard on his knees.

Nathan hissed and cursed himself for not being able to support his brother better.

“Jim!” he called, smoothing back Jim’s hair to search for signs of consciousness.

He was out.

“You can’t be sidhe .” Nathan shook his head, re-aiming the gun on Sasha’s body as best he could from his slumped position on the floor. “Jim banished the last of you bastards, and I only ever saw one sidhe possess someone else before, and he was human. That’s not Sasha’s body. It can’t be.”

“Actually…it can.” Still smug and collected, the imposter moved toward Nathan.

“Not that it was easy. See, I’ve been lying low in Sasha here for some time now.

It couldn’t have been more perfect if I had planned it.

All I wanted was to hide out for a while.

I figured I’d escape the next time you went through the Veil, never imagined I could actually take over, not another fae like an incubus.

But then there was that barn full of sidhe and a surge of raw power.

Then the cave. Between those two events, I had everything I needed to take over once he was left all alone and exhausted with your brother.

You’d be surprised how easy it was to make a strong enough sedative to sway Jim just with what you idiots carry around. ”

Nathan’s response dripped out of him slowly as the full horror of what this meant struck him. “You’ve…been hiding inside of Sasha for weeks?”

“The thanks all goes to you for the final push, Nathan. Leaving Sasha all alone tonight was all the opportunity I needed, the way he was still so shaky. So afraid. Vulnerable.”

“ Shut up .” Nathan had started to drop the gun from exhaustion and the pained realization that this really was a sidhe wearing his lover’s body, but now he steadied the gun again.

“Now, Nathan. Aren’t we past this? We both know you’re not going to shoot.”

“Fuck you,” Nathan ground out, clutching his brother’s limp body against him.

The sidhe crouched in front of Nathan. “Oh, don’t you remember? We’ve already done that. I’m looking forward to being more than just a spectator.”

Nathan couldn’t think. As fire surged through him, he pressed his hands to the sidhe’s chest— Sasha’s chest—and pushed with all the momentum of his fury behind him.

He was on his feet, a mad rush into a body he usually cherished, leaving Jim and the gun behind until he had slammed the sidhe into the wall beside the bathroom—the awful déjà vu leaving him numb.

“Get out! Get out of him right now, you fucking bastard!”

That same laughter was Nathan’s reply, too cruel to bear because it was Sasha’s voice almost like it normally sounded, as if the incubus himself were laughing in Nathan’s face. “And I thought it was fun riding Leven . But this…this is even better.”

Nathan didn’t understand at first, but when he looked into what should have been Sasha’s eyes, blue and beautiful, he saw something dark and familiar. “ You …? The spriggan…”

“Not as dumb as you look, huh?” The grin on Sasha’s face widened.

His eyes flicked shut for a moment, like the shutter on a camera, and when they opened again they were nearly all-over black.

But it was as if there were cracks in the black trying so desperately to be Sasha’s red, making his eyes look like the burnt embers of molten rock.

“I’m Sasha now, fully in control, more than I ever was with that foolish boy…

all thanks to you, Nathan. And now I wanna play . ”

Like a burst of air from within Nathan’s chest, a great whoosh shot him across the room. He struck the opposing wall hard enough that he was entirely winded when he crumbled to the floor.

“Come on, Nate. Don’t you want to play with me? All this power the incubus has given me lately…we could have so much fun.”

Nathan looked up, pain blossoming at the back of his head and throbbing throughout his shoulders after impact. Sasha’s tall, lean body was stalking towards him with that awful grin and sure strides. “I’m going to kill you, you asshole,” Nathan promised.

“Not without killing Sasha you won’t.”

Sasha’s body reached Nathan finally and a hand grabbed him too easily by the scruff of his shirt, lifting him from the floor and slamming him back into the wall he had only moments before been thrown into.

He ached, and Sasha’s body with the spriggan’s amplified power was so damn strong.

Nathan was shaking but not at all from fear.

He wanted to rip the spriggan out of Sasha’s body with his bare hands for even daring to do this to them.