Page 23 of Incubus (The Incubus Saga #1)

The third woman's hand shot out to touch Nathan's face before he had time to react.

Heat surged into Nathan's body at the contact of her skin, carrying no scent, no scent at all, only feeling.

He was reminded for a brief moment of Sasha sharing the feeding experience with him, only this heat had nothing to do with pleasure.

Nathan was so angry .

"Nate!"

Red flashed behind Nathan's eyes. His vision blurred and he felt his hands clenching into fists so tight that he could feel his nails biting into his palms. Someone grabbed him by the arm and pulled.

Images flew past him as he was forced to move even though he could barely focus on what was in front of him.

He was running, stumbling forward as he was dragged away from the Weird Sisters and out into the night.

Distantly, Nathan could hear Jim and Sasha yelling to each other that they needed to get away, get back to the hotel and come up with a new plan.

The rational part of Nathan’s brain agreed, but all he could think about was how stupid he had been for getting ambushed, how stupid the whole plan had been, the whole damn thing, and how mad it made him that Jim was holding his god damn hand!

Nathan wrenched his arm out of Jim’s grasp, skidding to a stop in the middle of the dark street. Everything in his vision looked red and jagged.

“Stop treating me like a kid because of two fucking minutes of difference!” Nathan yelled at his brother, who already looked panicked that Nathan had stopped running.

“This is all your fault! You never listen to me! Why do you always have to fuck everything up when I just want you to listen!” He very nearly screamed, pushing Jim hard in the chest with both hands.

Jim tripped over his feet in surprise. “Nate,” he said, looking at Nathan, hurt. “What are you talking about?”

“We have to get back to the hotel,” Sasha said, rushing up to both of them and grabbing Nathan’s arm as Jim had before. “We don’t have time for this.”

“Don’t touch me!” Nathan yelled louder, pushing Sasha away as hard as he had pushed his brother. He was disgusted and so blindingly angry at both of them, at everything , that the only thing he could imagine bringing him peace was to get rid of them both.

He didn’t realize he was pulling out his gun until Jim tackled him to the ground.

“Stop it! Just stop it!” Jim cried.

It was like waking up from a deep sleep. Nathan was on his back, with Jim’s heavy weight on top of him, holding each of his wrists to the ground. The gun lay useless beside them.

Nathan didn’t really remember how he had gotten away from the three fae women, or why he had been so angry in the first place. All of his fury dripped away and he felt perfectly calm, relaxed and yielding under Jim.

“I…I’m okay,” Nathan said. “I’m sorry, Jim. One of them touched me and I was just so…so mad , I…I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m okay. I’m okay.” He looked into his brother’s eyes, repeating that mantra, as if they were kids again and needed each other’s reassurance to believe in anything.

Jim sat back, his breathing tight and hands shaking as he released Nathan’s wrists. Nathan felt so foolish when they were getting up and he had to reach back down to retrieve his gun from the ground.

“You banished their power just by touching him,” Sasha said in awe, like he wouldn’t have believed anything like that was possible. “How did you do that?”

“I…uhh…” Jim stammered. “I have no idea. I just wanted him to calm down, and I…I don’t know. I didn’t try to do anything, I just—”

“Did it,” Sasha finished.

“It doesn’t matter. We have to go,” Nathan said, in his right mind enough to know that they really needed to move. “We have to get somewhere safe before the Witches of Eastwick catch up to us. Come on.”

This time it was Nathan grabbing Jim and Sasha by the arms and pulling them along until somehow they reached the hotel.

Nathan’s pulse wasn’t racing as much anymore and his skin didn’t feel so terribly hot. Jim’s touch had soothed him. But he still felt shaken from the fae’s influence that had been enough to get him to pull a gun on his brother.

“There were three women,” Sasha said once they had made it back to Jim and Nathan’s room. “It has to be Weird Sisters.”

“That was my guess,” Nathan said. “And I saw their eyes. They’re dark sidhe.”

“What? You mean someone summoned them?” Jim asked.

“No,” came the somewhat faded voice of Walter, appearing with a flicker again but able to join them now that enough distance had been put between them and the sidhe. “I do not believe they were summoned, Nathan. This feels different. Stronger.”

Nathan swallowed. Weird Sisters were bad enough.

They were always triplets, identical dark or light sidhe gifted with the Power of Three, and often used as enforcers for whichever court they served.

But sidhe of the dark court weren't supposed to be able to leave the Veil unless they were summoned by a powerful spell, the way Nathan had summoned the Messenger.

“The one who touched me said…she said they came here on their own,” Nathan lied, avoiding looking at Walter for fear of giving himself away in front of Sasha.

“That’s not possible,” Jim said. “Dark sidhe haven't been able to leave the Veil on their own for thousands of years, not since they lost the war to the light side.”

“You’re sure that’s what she said?” Sasha asked. “Maybe she was lying.”

Nathan glanced at Walter before replying, and then looked to Jim, saying as much as he could with his eyes that Walter was the messenger and certain of what he was saying. “She wasn’t lying.”

“If that’s really true then something bigger than just us is going on here,” Sasha said.

“But you might be right. I think I know which Weird Sisters we’re dealing with: the Muses.

That’s why it seemed like a nymph was causing everything.

” He leaned back against the wall beside the window and peered out of the curtain at the street below.

“The Muses are Weird Sisters that personify the basest of earthly excess. Want of material things, Desire of the flesh, and Violence. They're lower ranking dark sidhe, but still some of the oldest Weird Sisters I know of. I don’t think there is a way to summon them.”

“When they had me surrounded…Violence must have been the one that touched me,” Nathan said. “She had her hands on me before I could do anything and I just…” he trailed, shuddering at the remaining ache left by that power.

“You couldn’t have avoided it,” Jim said. “We’re no match for Weird Sisters, especially if they found a way out of the Veil. The point of all this is to find dark fae we can muscle info out of, not hand you right to them.”

“But we can’t just leave,” Nathan shot back. “I don’t think these Muses have any plans to move on. They’ll stay in Crofton until they got the whole town turned against each other and everyone’s dead.”

Silence drifted between them as the brothers looked at each other and at Sasha and agreed that they were not about to cut and run.

“Okay,” Sasha said. “We need to make the next move if we can. Chasing after them now would only get us killed. I vote we stay in tonight, all in this one room with a lookout at all times. If they don’t come for us first, then tomorrow…we’ll see what we can do in the daylight.”

Nathan volunteered to keep lookout first while Jim and Sasha slept. Walter had disappeared again, since he was still flickering occasionally after coming into such close contact with powerful sidhe.

Staring at the still streets and mostly empty parking lot outside, Nathan’s eyes grew heavy.

There had been no signs that the Muses were planning an attack, but he fought to stay awake and keep a constant vigil.

They hadn’t had time to consider the larger implications of the Muses being there unsummoned, which shouldn't have been possible.

The thought of that changing, of dark sidhe being able to cross over from the Veil whenever they wanted, made Nathan shudder.

Halfway into his turn on watch, Nathan glanced at the bed that would have been his and saw that Sasha was stirring. The incubus soon sat up, blinking awake.

“Can’t sleep,” Sasha mouthed, half-dressed but still wearing his jeans that like all of his pants hung low when he stood so that his tattoo peeked over the waistband. “Want some company?” he asked once he had made his way across the room.

Nathan was slumped heavily in a chair beside the window. He gestured to the remaining chair by the small table that Sasha then took and slid into place beside him.

For a few minutes they sat in silence. Sasha didn’t make any small talk, and Nathan didn’t feel the need to fill the quiet. He actually found himself enjoying the company for company’s sake, which was a rare thing, though he was still relieved to have the silence broken when Sasha spoke.

“I keep meaning to ask you,” Sasha said, his voice kept low for Jim’s sake. “Your necklace. I never see you without it. Must be something special, huh?”

Nathan stared down at the chain around his neck with his father’s ring hidden beneath his shirt. He tugged at it to reveal what Sasha had probably assumed would be a pendant but was actually a Celtic designed band of white gold.

“It was our dad’s,” he said when Sasha’s eyes grew wide. “Never really understood why Mom gave it to me instead of Jim. She was…having it cleaned for Dad the day he…” Nathan couldn’t quite say it, but he smiled somberly, knowing Sasha would understand.

“I’m sorry. I’m sure it was very different for you than it was for me,” Sasha said, smiling back at Nathan in the dark as they both leaned against the window and passed occasional glances outside to keep watch.

“I was sixteen when I went out on my own. You and Jim have been taking care of each other for longer than that from what I’ve heard. ”