Page 44 of Incubus (The Incubus Saga #1)

Dryads .

Nathan recognized the sidhe of the forest easily in their natural forms, almost blended in with the trees with the way the rain was still falling.

They were every shade of green and brown that existed, their skin mostly a pale green, with no real clothing, just vines and branches covering them like they were made out of the earth.

Their shape was still human, their genders distinguishable even without them speaking, but when they moved over the wet and muddied ground it was as if their feet reached out like roots to pull them forward.

“ You were controlling the golem?” Nathan said, itching to retrieve the shotgun he had lost in the mud. “I thought dryads were only light fae.”

“No,” Sasha said, eying their shotguns just as anxiously. “Remember the story of Hansel and Gretel? They weren’t eaten by a witch. Why do you think they got lost in the woods in the first place?”

"You don't say." It never surprised Nathan to discover that certain myths, legends, and folktales were often based on something real. "What, no gingerbread house for us?”

The dryads came up on either side of where the three of them were lying in the mud. Vines from the female twisted out from around her feet to take hold of the three lost shotguns and pull them out of reach.

Now that the dryads were closer, Nathan could see their slit green eyes.

“Why were you attacking people?” Jim demanded, still having to yell over the rain to be heard. "Is that the only thing dark sidhe are good for?"

“Oh, we don’t care about any of those other humans,” said the male.

“We wanted you ,” said the female. She moved her gaze squarely onto Nathan. "Word was the Grier brothers teamed up with a seal to track down the sidhe holding the coveted bounty. A few attacks on humans were an easy task to lure you.”

Nathan’s stomach plummeted.

“Word travels fast in the Veil,” said the male. “Everyone wants this bounty. You are a great prize, Nathan Grier, and the reward is doubled if we also provide the changeling.” He looked to Jim with equal accomplishment.

Panic was quickly tightening in Nathan’s gut, but before he could dwell too long on how foolishly they had walked into a trap, he jumped at the sudden feeling of movement beneath him.

Nathan tried to move and get to his feet, but fresh vines were growing up out of the earth and wrapping around his limbs faster than he could struggle free.

He could see the same happening to Sasha and Jim beside him.

Nathan’s back slammed to the ground as a thicker vine spread across his chest and yanked him down. The falling rain made it difficult to breathe and he turned his head to the side gasping, unable to move anything other than his neck and fingers.

“I’m sure a seal and incubus will only increase the bounty further,” the male voice said from above them.

Even with his head turned to the side, Nathan had trouble getting enough air.

The rain was coming down harder and his body was starting to sink into the soggy, mud-covered ground beneath them.

“I’m pretty sure the bounty isn’t dead or alive, assholes!

” Nathan yelled as best he could, turning his head the other way to see if he could get a look at how the others were fairing.

He could only see Sasha’s nearby hand, clawing at the dirt.

“I suppose we wouldn’t want to hand over a corpse,” said the female.

Just when Nathan thought he was about to swallow a few more mouthfuls of water, the rain stopped striking his face.

He could still feel water pounding on his lower half but, as he blinked skyward, he saw that the dryads were forming a small shelter over his and the others' faces out of winding roots and branches.

Nathan spit and gasped for breath at the relief.

“Nathan!” he heard Jim call.

“I’m fine! I’m going to be sick and miserable for the next week after all this, but I’ll live. How are you feeling, Jim?” Nathan asked pointedly, assuming his brother had been trying to use some sort of power from the start and was having little luck.

Jim didn’t reply.

Nathan looked again to where he could see Sasha’s hand still struggling and pulling at the vines holding them down. Super strength didn’t appear to be working this time either.

"There is a little-known doorway not far from here," said the female. "We are going to enjoy watching your new master Turn you, Nathan Grier, but the true spectacle will be your brother's Awakening."

The shift in the air was palpable after that, reminding Nathan of that night in Minnesota when Jim's powers first made their appearance. The vines in contact with Nathan’s skin, right around his wrists, started to tingle, and when he looked down the length of his body, he could see the larger vines on his chest glowing.

Then Nathan realized they weren't glowing. They were burning .

“Jim!”

The vines started to recoil from around Nathan's body just as he feared his clothing was about to set on fire. His wrists were a little singed, but he found himself more distracted by the screams coming from the dryads.

Jim and Sasha had already gotten to their feet, freed from the vines just as he was.

Sitting up sharply to join them, Nathan smacked his head into the makeshift shelter that had been created to cover them from the rain.

He cursed as he laid back down again and slid out from underneath the canopy, using the branches to hoist himself back to his feet.

“ Tell me who holds the bounty on my brother !” Jim was demanding of the dryads, already standing over them both while they screamed and writhed on the damp ground.

They were glowing as if they were burning too, but Nathan's eyes were drawn to the power glowing in his brother's hands, not like fire but crackling with tiny electrical currents.

“Jim, whoa ,” Nathan said, rushing around to his brother, but stopping cold when he saw how Jim’s blue eyes were flashing brightly and very prominently slit. Nathan looked to Sasha standing nearby whose brow was furrowed and hands looked like they very much wanted to reach for one of the shotguns.

And not just for the dryads.

“He’s fine,” Nathan said to the incubus, before turning back to his brother. “Jim! Slow down!”

“ Tell me !” Jim cried, either unaware or ignoring Nathan as the power flared in his hands.

The female dryad’s screams rose loudly and then died as she went still, which only increased the writhing from the male.

“Jim!” Nathan tried again.

“ Tell me !”

“You'll…you'll never find them. Not unless they want to be found,” the male spoke in labored gasps. “And believe me…your powers would mean nothing if you did."

" They ?" Jim repeated in a snarl. "So there's more than one of them? Tell me what you know! "

A sickly smile twitched at the dryad’s mouth, his body smoldering even as the rain fell and Jim's power lessened to let him speak. "No one knows their true name…or how to summon them. Only the Messenger killed by your brother. But there is only one. They are only one."

"What does that mean?" Jim pressed.

The dryad cast a pained look at his fallen companion and laughed bitterly. "You're the key, you see? We should not have underestimated how close you are. With you…everything will crumble.”

"You mean the Veil," Sasha said, inching closer to Jim and the dryads on the ground. “Tell us what’s going on. How are dark sidhe breaking out of the Veil?"

Nathan inched closer as well, but was still wary of the remaining crackling of power hovering about his brother's fingers.

“I only know...that the Veil started to grow thin twenty-four years ago," the dryad said, "and now...it is finally thin enough for passage."

“Twenty- four ?” Jim repeated. “The year I was born?”

“Is there some kind of plan being carried out?” Sasha asked. “Something with changelings? Why is this happening now?”

“If you really want to know...you can figure it out for yourself,” the dryad sneered. He was still smoldering, the heat turning all of his green coloring into burnt shades of brown and black like a scar upon the ground.

Towering over the dryad, Jim stood somehow taller and menacing with sparks crackling at his fingertips.

"You say that like you have a choice. Tell me who holds the bounty over Nathan.

Tell me everything you know !" he commanded, and Nathan recognized the power in Jim’s voice that he had heard when his brother controlled him and Gabriel in the Gatehouse.

The sound made Nathan tremble. He was so close to his brother, he could touch him, but he felt leagues away. The dryad was cowering now, so suddenly that Nathan had to wonder if there was something about Jim that had changed, something that went deeper than he could see.

But even though the dryad could not overcome Jim's power, all he said was, "If you face the keeper of the bounty…it will already be over."

Jim went so stock-still and rigid that it made Nathan twitch to do something, anything . He was ready to speak up again, take his brother’s arm, tackle his brother to the ground if he had to, but it was too late.

The dryad screamed and the next thing Nathan knew he was being hurtled away from Jim to the edge of the clearing.

His back struck a tree and he crumbled, everything going dark for longer than he was probably aware.

When he coughed and gasped the wind back into his lungs, it was no longer raining, and the clearing was twice as large as it had been before.

"Nathan, what happened?!" Walter shouted, there beside Nathan and reaching out as if he wanted nothing more than to be able to embrace him.

It was like what had happened in Minnesota with the street signs, only this was every tree in a huge radius, bent outward all around them.

Nathan could see Sasha getting to his feet yards away on the other side of the clearing.

Jim remained where he had been at the very center, on his knees, trembling.

“Jim!” Nathan called as he painfully lurched to his feet and ran through the slick and sloppy mud. He didn't have time for Walter now. Jim wasn’t moving other than tremors shaking his shoulders. Even his eyes were closed.

As Nathan drew closer, he saw what remained of the dryads scattered around Jim like kindling.

Sasha was approaching much more slowly, and Nathan took notice when the incubus pulled one of the shotguns out of the mud.

He held up a hand toward Sasha, pleading, but Sasha wasn’t moving with any real conviction.

The incubus held the shotgun without threat of using it and nodded at Nathan to approach Jim first. Any other seal wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot Jim long before now.

Nathan had never been so thankful that Sasha was also an incubus.

“Jim,” Nathan tried calmly, able to be quiet now that the rain was no longer falling. He could only wonder if that had something to do with his brother too. “Come on…please. Look at me, it’s okay. You’re okay.”

Blue eyes rimmed in red and not slit blinked up at Nathan. Even with Jim’s hair plastered to his face and so wet, Nathan could tell his brother was crying.

Falling down into the mud beside Jim, Nathan grabbed his brother by his filthy jacket and tugged him close. “Hey, just take a breath, okay? Those tree-huggers deserved what they got. Don’t go crying over them.”

“But…” Jim sniffed, looking scared and small like he was the younger brother by those two important minutes. “I didn’t mean to do that, Nate. I was just so…mad again. I hurt you.”

“This bump on the head?” Nathan dismissed, even though he knew he could very well have a concussion. “I barely felt a thing. Besides, we got some info this time. The bounty holder is a they , whatever that means. At least it's something."

"But the Muses, the thinning of the Veil, all of it, it’s...because of me,” Jim said miserably. “The Veil’s been weakening since I was born. And now it’s worse …because I came back. You shouldn’t have brought me back. It's my fault they're going to take you.”

"Don't say that," Nathan said. "We can't trust anything from a dryad. What does it matter when the Veil started to weaken? If dark sidhe are able to push through, who knows what they're planning. There's no point blaming yourself until we know some facts. Right, Sasha?" He turned to the incubus.

Sasha nodded without further prompting, wholly supportive as he stood beside them.

"We can't be sure of anything. Even if this does have something to do with changelings or even you, Jim, this is bigger than us.

It's bigger than one person. If the dark fae have some kind of plan in motion to bring down the Veil, everyone is in danger.

We can figure it out while still searching for the holder of Nathan's bounty. We can solve this together.”

"Exactly," Nathan said gratefully. "We'll figure this out, Jim, but you have to get a hold of yourself. We need to get out of here in case the dryads told anyone we were coming." He gripped Jim's arms and tried to pull him to his feet.

Jim was solid as a rock and dug deep into the mud. He didn’t budge, simply hung onto Nathan tighter.

“Jim,” Sasha said, coming up on Jim’s other side, still standing and holding one of the shotguns limply.

He placed a hand on Jim’s shoulder. “All we need is a name.

Just a name and we can save Nathan. Whatever else is going on, we'll figure it out.

Right now we have to go." He tugged on Jim hard enough that he lifted him out of the mud and set him on his feet as if Jim weighed nothing.

Nathan struggled to his feet as well, grateful that for once he didn’t have to put his brother back together all on his own.

As Nathan stood, he nearly slipped on another of the shotguns that was half buried in the mud beneath him. He reached down to retrieve it, though he didn’t feel right carrying a weapon right now, as if the mere act soured his stomach.

The third shotgun was lost, but that was the last thing on any of their minds as they left the clearing to reclaim their supply bag and leave the woods behind.