Page 87 of Changeling (The Incubus Saga #2)

He was moving Sasha’s hands through Jim’s hair and rolling Sasha’s hips consistently, but he didn’t seem to notice yet that Jim wasn’t responding anymore.

“When this is all over, after I’ve taken everything you have, I will be more than happy to send you to him.”

“N-No…” croaked Jim’s roughened voice, “you won’t.”

The spriggan flew back across the room with a great surge of power, slamming into that same wall by the bathroom.

Sasha’s body crumbled, winded and totally taken off guard.

Nathan would have cheered but he still couldn’t speak or move, which meant that the spriggan was still powerful enough to hold him in place.

They weren’t faring much better with how wrecked and unsteady Jim looked either, breathing heavily from arousal. Nathan tried his damnedest not to notice that his brother was wearing boxers that made his hard-on very apparent as he struggled to his feet.

“Developed an immunity to the pheromones already, did you?” the spriggan said, coughing out gulps of air as he pushed Sasha’s body up onto his feet. “Even at the strength…I’ve reduced you to. That’s impressive.”

The spriggan raised Sasha’s right arm like a loaded weapon and Jim was immediately pushed across the carpet. But he fought back, purely mentally at first, and then raised a hand of his own to better focus his powers.

The standoff was invisible but palpable. Nathan’s first indication that the spriggan was growing tired was when he called out, “Kick his ass, Jim!” and the words actually left his mouth. He was still pinned but he could speak again. Jim just needed to hold out a little longer.

“Come on, Jim, you know you can’t keep this up,” the spriggan said, taking one slow, painful looking step closer to Jim across the room while pushing against Jim’s barrier.

“Strong as you’ve become since we last met, it’s still harder to control those powers than usual, isn’t it?

Don’t you just feel so tired? So weak .”

“Sh-shut up,” Jim said through chattering teeth. It was like he had this awful fever but was forcing himself to fight through the sickness. The spriggan was right. Nathan could see Jim losing his footing and being pushed back again as the spriggan’s powers overtook his own.

Nathan internally cheered his brother on when a final push of power from Jim broke his and the spriggan’s contact, and Jim lunged across the room.

It was obvious Jim was going on pure adrenaline.

The pheromones had faded from his senses, but he was still far from his best thanks to whatever the spriggan had drugged him with.

Brute strength might not be enough. Nathan still cringed, however, when Jim laid the first punch across Sasha’s jaw and there was a resounding crack.

The spriggan was knocked back into the wall again but remained standing, snarling as he returned Jim’s lunge, barreling into the older Grier until they struck the end of the bed and bounced off of it onto the floor.

The spriggan fought hard for the upper hand and managed to straddle Jim, pinning him down, but Jim pressed his hands up against Sasha’s chest and held them there until the skin started to sizzle and Sasha’s voice cried out in pain.

The spriggan grabbed Jim’s hands and twisted away, flipping Jim over to the side.

There were two burned handprints on Sasha’s ribs. Even as Nathan looked at them they began to heal and fade, but that still had to sting.

Before Jim could launch another attack, the spriggan lashed out with a vicious blow to his temple.

Jim looked dazed as he lifted himself up and tried to quickly scramble to his knees to steady himself, but the spriggan slammed a closed fist down into the middle of Jim’s back, sprawling him out on the floor.

Stunned and pained now, Jim tried to roll over, but by the time he had managed it, Sasha’s body was on top of him again.

They were so close to Nathan, he could easily reach them if only he could get away from the wall. The fight had loosened the spriggan’s mental hold on him enough that Nathan could almost stretch his entire midsection forward, but his arms and legs remained pinned.

“Always did prefer doing things the old fashioned way,” the spriggan growled, sitting on Jim to hold him down and squeezing Jim’s neck with Sasha’s hands, the sidhe’s thumbs pressing unforgivingly into the dip in Jim’s throat.

Jim gurgled in an attempt to speak, his own hands coming up to grip at Sasha’s and burn them to get him to let go. This time the heat didn’t seem to bother him.

“Jim!” Nathan cried. He could almost get away from the wall. He was so close .

The spriggan squeezed Jim’s throat tighter, eyes flashing with the cracks of red behind the black and smiling in a way that made Sasha look sickening and mad.

Then Jim turned his head just slightly and his eyes met Nathan’s.

The dark blue began to change, shifting to amber and slit…

but the color kept going. Like outside the cave, it spread outward to the whites, shimmering brightly as even his irises faded.

And Nathan knew, even without Jim having to say anything, that this was it, no more holding back.

Hesitation would mean the end, and if Jim failed, Nathan would be next.

Jim was letting himself reach True Awakening.

A brief passing of shame crossed Jim’s face, replaced quickly with firm resolve.

The spriggan erupted away from Jim with a shockwave stronger than before.

Jim stood slowly, no longer fatigued or winded.

The bruises forming on his neck faded, and when he was finally on his feet, he seemed taller—larger than life.

Nathan fell forward from the wall, taking only a moment to realize he was free before he scrambled to his feet. When he looked up, Jim was only a yard in front of him, holding Sasha’s body in the air with his mind, and everything was quiet—an eerie standstill.

Jim’s lips curled up into a sneer, that horrible not-Jim expression that made Nathan think of the cave and everything he hated about the future.

“I’m sorry, Sasha,” Jim said, lacking all genuineness in the words for how pleased with himself he sounded as he shot out his right arm.

There was no electricity, no bolt of light, no show of anything but Jim’s hand palm-out, and yet the moment he directed it at the spriggan, Sasha’s voice began to scream.

Nathan recognized that sound, the way Sasha’s voice howled and keened, so pained. It was the same awful noise the Dryads had made before Jim turned them into kindling. Jim was killing the spriggan. And he was killing Sasha with him.

“Jim!” Nathan cried, barely able to hear his own voice over the sound of Sasha’s screams. He was only a foot from Jim when he hit a barrier.

There was something solid but invisible that wouldn’t let him go any further.

“Jim!” he called with further panic, raising a fist to pound on the empty wall.

How could Jim keep him away; he wouldn’t even look at him. “Jim, stop!”

“I-I’ll…crawl back…from the Veil…to finish you,” the spriggan managed between pained cries, Sasha’s body spasming and tense as it remained hovering above the floor.

Jim’s eyes glittered. “No. You won’t.”

Black mist ripped from Sasha’s mouth, summoning into a swirling ball just in front of Jim’s outstretched hand. The moment all of it had left the incubus, Sasha’s body fell limp to the floor, his eyes left to stare open and empty at Nathan, who couldn’t stop pounding on the barrier.

But it was at that moment that the barrier dropped, too late for Nathan to do anything.

He ran for Sasha’s fallen body anyway, gathering the incubus against him.

He looked over at Jim, at the sneer that was slowly turning into a pleased smile.

As Jim spoke, Nathan didn’t understand what was happening when the amber covering all of Jim’s eyes began to glow white .

“You will never hurt us again,” Jim swore to the black mist of the spriggan, “nor anyone else.” He closed his hand into a tight fist and the mist, already seemingly quivering in pain, fizzled like an implosion into nothing.

Nathan felt movement in his arms and heard a great gasp from Sasha as the incubus came to. He couldn’t believe it even as he looked down and saw blue eyes blinking awareness.

Fresh tears filled Nathan’s eyes and streamed down his face with the greatest relief.

Pulling Sasha in for a fierce embrace, he doubted any amount of time would be long enough to hold his incubus close—his incubus, not the spriggan, not anything but Sasha .

He relished in how tightly Sasha clung to him in return, the redhead’s voice hitching as he tried to speak.

All Nathan heard was a whimpered, “ Nathan ,” and it was more than enough to sustain him forever.

Only after they had stayed like that for too long did Nathan pull away and wipe at the tears staining Sasha’s face, even though he knew his own face couldn’t be much better.

A subtle shuffling of feet alerted Nathan to their nearby watcher, interrupting any chance he had at saying something monumental to mark the moment.

He couldn’t ignore Jim but he was afraid to look up, afraid of what he might see.

When he finally did look, for a moment there was only those all-white eyes, devoid even of pupils, and a blank expression.

But as soon as the white faded to wonderful deep blue, and Jim smiled in a way only Nathan’s brother Jim could smile, none of Nathan’s fears seemed to matter anymore.

Jim fell to his knees beside them and embraced them both.

“Always so quick to celebrate.”

Nathan screamed as pain racked through his chest worse than it had the morning the Messenger first dug in her claws. He pitched to the side, held up only because Jim and Sasha were on either side of him.

He could barely look up through the sudden pain, but he did, and he saw the bastard himself, male and grinning as he walked toward them from the other side of the room as if he had merely appeared out of thin air.

“Bravo,” Malak said, stopping just in front of them before looking smugly down at Jim. “Really well done, James, that ending was quite inspired. But I’m afraid you didn’t hold up your end of the bargain.”

“What?” Sasha’s voice was hoarse from screaming, and tears still stained his cheeks. “What are you talking about? We did what you asked. Even if there’s someone we missed, we have another week yet.”

“Oh? You did what I asked? Because I’m fairly certain I asked you to return all of the remaining dark sidhe to the Veil. There was no amendment about killing them.”

Nathan lurched forward onto his hands and knees as another spike of pain shot through him.

“You can’t do this!” Jim yelled. “It isn’t fair!”

“Fairness hardly plays a role, dear boy. Of course if we’re talking rules and obligations, and that Nathan made a deal and I am merely seeing it through to the end, then fair is exactly what this is.”

Nathan’s gaze returned to the black suit, the black shirt and red tie, the blond hair and horrible eyes.

It was a handsome face that smiled possessively back at him.

Nathan had assumed it was a guise, but there was no twisted other version of the dark sidhe king hiding beneath the surface.

In his last moments, Nathan saw Malak as he truly was. Beautiful and shining.

“Time for us to go…” Malak said, but his voice was distant, like in a tunnel, as the world grew dim and fuzzy around Nathan.

He heard Sasha call out, “I’m supposed to save him! I can save him!” but maybe this time Wade had been wrong.

Further protests swirled around Nathan, but he couldn’t really make sense of them.

He felt Sasha and Jim’s hands leave his body.

Pain surged through him, but he seemed to float, suspended in a void of sound and light and sudden cold.

For the briefest moment he thought he saw Walter looking on sadly from too far away.

Nathan tried to move, managing only to bring a hand to his chest where he clutched his father’s wedding ring tight.

The only thing he could be certain of was the rush of darkness that filled him when a hand—Malak’s hand—touched his shoulder.

If he fell, felt another sting of pain, felt burned or ripped from his body, or even screamed again, he couldn’t be sure.

There was only darkness, the empty echo of Jim and Sasha shouting his name, and remnants of the lullaby calling cruelly after him into the dark.

“And until we meet again…”