Page 64 of Incubus (The Incubus Saga #1)

Nathan held Sasha on his left side so that his right hand was free to hold a gun.

He opened the door as best he could and kicked it the rest of the way, peering inside.

The warehouse was huge and far too quiet, but the first room looked benign.

There were two doors on the far side, the room otherwise empty.

Nathan decided to go left since that was closer to the room Jim had originally gone through.

The next room, finally, had some clutter. Not enough that a grown man could hide, but enough to hide traps. Nathan entered more cautiously, not surprised that Sasha was growing heavier the further they went. He stared at the surrounding shelving, filled with old boxes and random equipment.

“Stop!”

Nathan felt small pressure on the front of his foot and pulled back just as a gun fired into the wall, barely missing them. “Shit,” he gasped, looking down to find a tripwire.

Wires , Sasha had said.

“Good eyes, pal. You probably just saved my life,” Nathan said. He tried for a smile, but Sasha slumped against him. “Whoa, you okay? Not hit or something, are you?”

“So…tired,” Sasha said, struggling to keep his eyes open.

“I know. Just a little longer. Then we’ll get back to Schuester’s, patch you all up, and…we’ll take a vacation somewhere, okay? Somewhere with big hotel room beds.”

“Tease,” Sasha said in something of a tired hiss.

“You know it,” Nathan said. “Jim has to be further through now. No word from Walter, so we have to catch up. Come on.” He stepped over the wire in case it was somehow set up to fire again, and helped Sasha over as well, before pulling him along beside him further into the room.

Nothing else seemed out of the ordinary and there was only one door out.

To Nathan’s dismay, the next room was dark, offering no way to know what lay inside.

He entered slowly, trying to keep Sasha blocked by his body like a shield.

Dragging his feet across the floor, Nathan tested for wires, and found one a foot from the door.

Carefully, he stepped over it and once again helped Sasha do the same.

“See, this isn’t so bad,” Nathan said. He could almost make out another door ahead of them and was more than ready to get out of the dark and find some reassurance that Jim was okay. “I guess Gabriel’s not as good as I—”

"Nathan!" Walter called from somewhere in the dark.

Nathan froze, feeling slight pressure on his chest where he hadn't thought to watch for a wire. Something clicked in the distance and the only thing Nathan could think to do was push Sasha to the ground.

The impact sent Nathan flying. He landed halfway between the dark room and the one they had come from with a great searing pain throughout his chest from the shotgun blast that had struck him.

Nathan knew the sound of a shotgun, the very impractical thing he hadn’t brought himself. At first, he thought he must be in shock. There had to be a hole through his chest and he was already halfway to being dead.

Risking a look at the damage, Nathan stared down the length of his sprawled body.

There was too much blood already and his hands were shaking as he ripped at his T-shirt using the tiny pellet holes that had been left behind.

They were small holes, Nathan noted, trying to take some comfort in that, and when he could finally see his chest, it was the same—tiny little holes deep enough that Nathan couldn’t see the pellets that were stuck there, but at least he hadn’t been left with a single gaping wound.

"Nathan!" Walter called again, still coming from somewhere Nathan couldn't see. "Jim has almost reached the center where Gabriel is waiting. You have to get up."

Nathan knew that, but his head was swimming from the pain and flow of blood.

Then Nathan felt hands, soft, trembling hands climbing up his body and pressing into the wounds.

“Nathan?” came Sasha’s strangely small voice, the sight of him following soon after out of the darkness as he moved into the doorway next to Nathan and tried to help stop the bleeding.

“No, no, no…you can’t leave. If you’re real… then you can’t leave me. Please …”

“I’m real,” Nathan said, wishing his voice didn’t sound so choked. “And I’m not…going anywhere. We have to…we have to help Jim. You have to help me get up.”

Sasha shook his head furiously, despite the slump in his body that proved he was barely keeping himself conscious. “Have to…stop the bleeding. You’re hurt.”

“I know I’m hurt…but we don’t have time to…” Nathan trailed, staring at Sasha’s dirty, too small shirt, that was really Nathan’s shirt. “Hey, you want to help?”

Wounded blue eyes looked at Nathan with desperate devotion.

“You can use your shirt…to tie around the wounds…and stop the bleeding. You’ll have to tear it.”

Sasha didn’t even pause to think. He lifted his hands from Nathan’s chest and dug into the cotton of his shirt with sudden claws, tearing it down the middle easily.

Nathan wondered why Sasha wasn’t in his incubus form completely, since holding the glamours had to take some kind of effort, but the iron messing with Sasha’s brain seemed to be affecting that too.

Nathan hissed through his teeth, biting back a cry when Sasha tied the torn T-shirt tight around his chest. He already had scars there from Sasha's claws, along with his dark fae mark. Soon, he would be able to add shotgun holes to the collection.

Getting to his feet wasn’t easy, not when it was like the blind leading the blind with Sasha trying to help. But stupid or not to move on, a few shotgun pellets were not going to slow Nathan down, not when his brother was still walking into a trap.

He knocked the shotgun out of the way when they reached it, propped up in front of the door that led out of the room. There was light peeking through the crack underneath the door, enough that Nathan could finally see the shadowy figure of Walter with him.

Kicking open the door with some of his last remaining strength, Nathan found the final room to be brightly lit and much larger than the others, almost as large as the main area at the front of the building.

All of the doors led here, like some demented funhouse, and Gabriel was at the center just as Walter had said, waiting patiently in the middle of the room with nothing but a handgun.

Nathan had lost the gun he had been holding, but he reached for the spare tucked into his jeans and took aim just as Gabriel did the same. Nathan would have fired and been done with it, consequences be damned, if Jim hadn’t just then burst forth from one of the other doors.

Gabriel turned on Jim immediately, but Nathan breathed some relief that Jim didn’t look like he had met the same fate with a shotgun.

“I thought you would escape with the incubus, Nathan, but all the better for it to end like this,” Gabriel said as he lowered his gun. “Look for yourself. See the truth about your brother.”

Nathan's green eyes met Jim's blue from across the room. Nathan had no idea what Gabriel was talking about until his gaze drifted lower and he saw what was drawn on the floor.

In front of every door leading into that final room was Entrapment Runes like the ones they had used on the Muses. Nathan and Sasha were standing in one too. It was possible to draw runes to hold humans, but these were clearly designed for dark fae.

As Jim glanced down to discover the traps as Nathan had, he huffed. “This is your big plan? I'm not the same as a dark fae. I’m not . And I am not Awak—” Jim cut off as he walked forward and met an invisible barrier at the edge of the trap.

Nathan felt the air rush out of his lungs.

Gabriel beamed. “Not Awakened? Maybe you are, maybe you aren't, but you are certainly close enough for the magic in those runes to sense your evil. I understand if even you didn’t truly believe the truth until now. Your seeming innocence is what swayed your brother and others. But you have to see the truth now. You are not human.”

Staring as Jim tried unsuccessfully again and again to leave the trap, Nathan forgot his wounds, forgot the weight of Sasha at his side, and just walked. He kicked a scratch in the paint of the entrapment rune beneath him to break the circle as he pulled Sasha along after him.

It didn’t make sense. Nathan had seen Jim walk through Entrapment Runes before. Even with the Muses surely Jim had passed through those traps when they made them and afterwards. The only thing that was different between then and now was time.

“You understand now too, Nathan,” Gabriel said as Nathan drew closer, unafraid because Nathan had also lowered his weapon and was focused on Jim. “He is not your brother anymore. His powers taint him, give his soul over to the Devil himself—”

“ Shut up ,” Jim cried in a low growl like Nathan had never heard from his brother before.

Jim was shaking, his eyes shimmering, and soon, his pupils became unsurprisingly and unfairly slit .

“You must be stopped,” Gabriel went on, ignoring Jim’s words and that dark fae glare as he raised his weapon again to point it squarely at Jim’s chest.

Nathan couldn’t move. He didn’t know what to do, what was right , but even though he wanted nothing more than to give his brother the benefit of the doubt, he was not prepared for what happened next.

Gabriel cocked the hammer of his gun but he didn’t fire. Instead, his hand began a slow curve toward his own temple.

Jim looked on, his eyes glowing as if they were on fire, slit and wild, with death in their gaze. “You’re right,” he said, his voice too low, too dark. “But not by you.”

The gunshot startled Nathan, the gore left behind, the sight of Gabriel falling and then just there, dead on the floor. Nathan couldn’t breathe, feeling Sasha tense and clutch him tighter. His heart sank further when he realized that Walter was nowhere to be found—as if banished by a dark sidhe.

“Nathan,” Jim called, still low, still dark, but with something else, something that sounded like Jim , dripping with anguish and apology.

Nathan looked at his brother, his brother, Jim, damn it , even if he was caught in a trap built for dark fae.

Those eyes were his brother’s eyes, the same eyes as the ones Nathan had dried when they were kids, the same eyes that glared at him when the teasing went too far, and laughed with him, and looked at him with understanding that no one else could ever grasp.

It shouldn’t matter that they were slit.

Nathan couldn’t bear the look his brother was giving him now, he couldn’t bear what he knew was about to happen, that Jim wasn’t going to give him a choice.

“Nathan,” Jim said again, pleading. Mournful. “ Shoot me .”