Page 55 of Incubus (The Incubus Saga #1)

Nathan had completely forgotten about his wounded leg, being so focused on Sasha.

He remembered that it had started aching in the car, but the bleeding had stopped again so that Nathan didn’t think it mattered enough to mention.

Schuester was the one who reminded him, having noticed the bloodstain and tear in Nathan’s jeans.

Their friend had fetched a first aid kit, setting to work to clean the wound out regardless of Nathan's protests that he was fine.

The wound was borderline infected and angry after hours of going untreated, but once some antiseptic had been applied and Nathan's calf was wrapped in bandages, the pain lessened again to a dull throb.

Sasha’s aunt arrived at Schuester's apartment only a few hours later, hours of waiting that Nathan spent mostly gritting his teeth.

Jim answered the sharp rapping of knocks when she arrived, though Nathan stayed close, peering around Jim to get a good look at the succubus he had only heard about in passing.

It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that she was probably the most beautiful woman Nathan had ever laid eyes on in real life.

She put supermodels to shame with her long legs, shown off to perfection in a short black skirt and heels.

Her sweater was the same royal blue as her eyes, like Sasha’s, and it clung in all the right places, hanging off her shoulders to show pale perfect skin.

Her face was almost identical to the face of Sasha’s mother and other aunt, but her hair was raven black and wavy down her back.

Nathan held back a whistle, threatening to form out of old habit, and contented himself with a long once-over of the ravishing woman. The only thing that marred the picture was her fierce expression, as frightening as she was beautiful.

“Where is my nephew?” Shiarra all but growled, pushing past Jim without awaiting an invitation.

Nathan took a step back since she headed straight for him. He gestured further into the apartment. “First bedroom up the stairs.”

Shiarra's eyes passed a sharp, icy glare at him. She barely acknowledged the figure of Schuester or his daughter in the living room as she headed for the stairs.

As wary of the succubus as Nathan was, he was not about to abandon Sasha. He followed Shiarra into the room and approached the bed on the opposite side. Jim came in behind him.

A delicate looking hand passed over Sasha’s brow, the same gesture all of them kept repeating even though Sasha had never shown signs of a fever, no signs of anything other than his endless sleep.

Then Shiarra's hand brushed gently over the jagged scar left on Sasha’s chest and her fierce blue eyes looked to Nathan.

“You said a seal did this?”

“Yeah, but he's not one of the men in this apartment so you can quit with the accusing looks,” Nathan shot back.

“Where is he?"

“We don't know,” Jim said. “He got away while we were trying to help Sasha.”

Shiarra released a small huff of air. “Well done, boys,” she said, and Nathan thought as he listened more to her voice that he detected a faint accent, though it was slight enough that he wasn’t sure he could give it an origin.

“And here Sasha told me not to worry. You’ve certainly proven otherwise, now haven’t you? ”

“Now you listen to me,” Nathan started in, no longer caring if Shiarra could technically rip him apart, “Sasha means a lot to us too, so you can shove that self-righteous bullshit right up your ass.” Nathan thought he heard Jim gasp, but he pressed on, staring across the bed into burning blue eyes.

“We did everything we could. We called you because we’re sorry, but we don’t know how to bring an incubus out of a damn coma.

You want to help with that, good. You want to stand there and look down on us because we weren't able to do more, then you can get the hell out of here. "

The silence that followed Nathan’s outburst was painfully still.

Nathan felt like he was back to being ten years old, having a staring contest with his brother.

Shiarra was clearly not the type of woman to usually back down.

But she also seemed to respect that enough in others to decide Nathan wasn’t worthy of being dismembered.

“You must be Nathan,” she said, and crossed slender arms over her more than ample chest.

“Nice to meet you,” Nathan replied with extra sarcasm. “Now, are you going tell us how we can get Sasha back, or do you need to touch up your makeup first?”

Jim moved in quickly to join Nathan beside the bed. “What he means ...is we’ll do whatever it takes to help Sasha, so please, tell us there is something we can do. We’ve already told you everything that happened over the phone. It wasn’t pure iron—”

“It was an alloy,” Shiarra finished. She started fishing in the purse that was thrown over her shoulder.

“If that is the case then your quick work with the antidote probably saved my boy’s life.

To flush the rest of the iron out of his system and wake him…

we’ll need this.” She pulled a vial from her purse not unlike the ones Sasha carried.

“I'll also need a little something from both of you.”

Nathan stared at the vial. At first it looked identical to the ones with the antidote, but then Nathan noticed strange spirals of red mixed in with the green.

“Not that I don’t trust your other friend,” Shiarra said, nodding toward the door to indicate Schuester, “but I only need two more candidates. My own blood has already been added.” She started moving around the bed toward them and they both instinctually backed away.

“Whoa, whoa,” Nathan said, enjoying the fact that he currently had Jim as a human shield. “What’s this about blood? What is that stuff? What’s it do?”

Shiarra stopped a mere foot from Jim and propped her free hand on her hip.

Nathan couldn’t help but notice how similar her exasperated expression was to Sasha’s.

“If you two care about Sasha as much as you say then this ‘stuff’ is what is going to wake him back up again. The most powerful thing to our kind is passion, emotion. This antidote is stronger than the one used for simple wounds. It combines the Power of Three, taking an amplified antidote and mixing it with three drops of blood from three willing participants who love the one being cured. Love, boys,” Shiarra repeated with something of a sneer, “so you understand why I am not so thrilled about this. Sasha has no one but me. So either you’re lying and using him somehow, and in that case the potion will be ineffective…

and mean very bad things for you. Or…you really care for my nephew and are therefore the only thing that can help me save him.

" Her eyes drifted incredulously to Nathan.

Nathan felt both a rush of anger toward Shiarra and a jolt of joy at finally knowing there was a clear way to save Sasha and that it would work, of course it would work, because Nathan and Jim had grown to care for Sasha very much. Surely, that translated easily into love between friends.

At the very least friends.

Perhaps it was Nathan and Jim's twin looks of determination as they walked toward her that made Shiarra’s expression soften.

She was still a little vicious when she snatched up Jim’s hand and pricked his finger with her suddenly transformed succubus claws.

Jim hissed but didn’t pull away, allowing Shiarra to hold his finger over the now open vial and squeeze three drops of blood.

At his turn, Nathan reached down to grab for his ankle blade and cut his own finger. Shiarra huffed at him, more than a bit snobbish as far as Nathan was concerned, and was perhaps a bit less gentle with Nathan when she squeezed the blood from him.

Everything else about the new, more powerful antidote worked the same.

First Shiarra poured it over the wound, where it sizzled the way it had the first time, softening the scar a bit though not getting rid of it completely, and then she poured what remained down Sasha’s throat and green light shot through his body beneath the skin.

Nathan waited for that glorious moment when Sasha’s eyes would spring wide, flashing brilliant red, but it didn’t happen. Sasha still didn’t move and, for a moment, Nathan felt a wave of panic.

As the succubus turned away from Sasha, her expression was not one of anger, however, but somewhere between fondness and exhaustion.

“Now we wait. This isn’t a quick a fix. It will take time to banish every bit of iron, and only then will he wake again.

The longest it could possibly take would be twenty-four hours, but considering how quickly you initially healed him, it might only be a few hours before the potion has finished.

If after a day he does not wake up,” she added, returning the empty vial to her purse and walking once again over to where Jim and Nathan were standing, “you won’t live to see the day that follows.

That, I should think, should be very clear. ”

“Crystal,” Nathan grumbled.

“So...you have a place in Seattle?”

Nathan could kill Jim for attempting small talk. He preferred the previous several hours of awkward silence.

Schuester had put on a pot of coffee, Nathan and Jim both managing to function on pure will alone as they waited into the night. The four of them along with Kitty were seated in the living room.

Shiarra had become somewhat more courteous, at least to Schuester, who she had heard Sasha talk of fondly for much longer than Nathan or Jim. She also seemed especially softened when speaking to Kitty, referring to her as 'dear girl' every time she spoke to her.