Page 18 of Sidhe (The Incubus Saga #3)

Nathan had no plan about what he was going to say when he walked out of that not-there diner, leaving behind his fries and coffee to the dark and dust. Jim and Sasha were both just standing out there, staring at him, not knowing what to say either.

Maybe they thought he would walk right by them, get in his car, and leave again without so much as a word.

Instead, he went up to Sasha and couldn't have been more pleased that the incubus didn't push him away when he fell against him, sighing, "Can we go home?"

The incubus hugged him tight, heart in his voice as he answered, “Yeah, Nate. We can go home.”

Most of the night after that blurred, whatever other words might have passed between them, though Nathan remembered keenly the feeling of Jim hugging him just as tightly as Sasha and making him promise he would never do something like that again.

They left the junker behind and took Nathan’s car instead.

Jim drove, Sasha in the back with Nathan so he could rest. Nathan must have fallen asleep right away.

He dreamt, vivid and startlingly clear, but not of the Veil.

This dream was different. Nathan saw the future, both horrible and beautiful intertwined like two different possibilities playing out side by side.

He saw something like a battlefield and more creatures and beings spread over it than he could count.

The two sides fighting had become a great mass.

He was leading one of them but in the midst of it all he couldn't tell which one.

Nathan opened his eyes to the sight of sunlight on the horizon and the sounds of Johnny Cash over the stereo.

He vaguely remembered requesting for Jim to find an oldies station.

Sasha’s arms were warm around him, holding him close like everything was a dream and letting Nathan go would mean losing him forever.

When Nathan looked up, he found Sasha smiling at him, his blue eyes so tired and red-rimmed but happy. That’s when Nathan remembered the medallion in his pocket. He fished it out and made Sasha lean down so he could slip it over his head.

The incubus fingered it, not understanding. “St. Anthony?”

“So you don’t lose me again,” Nathan answered.

He stretched his neck forward to capture a kiss. Sasha tasted like everything wonderful about the past year—the real year they’d shared together, not Nathan’s time in the Veil. It was a brief kiss, mostly chaste, but when Nathan pulled away, Sasha was smiling ever brighter.

“There you are,” the incubus said. “I knew you were still in there, Nathan.”

Nathan had to smile too. “Guess so.”

“Nate?” Jim called from the front.

“Sorry, Jim,” Nathan said on reflex, assuming the mushy PDA was getting to his brother. But Jim just chuckled in a relieved, blissful kind of way.

“It’s okay. I just wondered if you wanted this back.” Jim’s arm reached between the seats, his eyes doing their best to stay on the road. Jim was handing him his necklace, with their father’s wedding ring dangling brilliantly on the end.

Nathan slipped it back on where it belonged. But peace was a fleeting thing. “I’m sorry, Jim,” he said again as he stared at his brother’s blue eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Nate?”

“It’s all so messed up.” Nathan scrubbed at his face, shifting in Sasha’s arms that he never wanted to leave. But he wasn’t free yet, not really. They still had work to do.

“It’s okay, Nate,” Sasha said gently beside his ear. “You needed time. We understand.”

“No, I—” Nathan shook his head. “Well, I did, but…”

He sat further up, much of his body still touching Sasha in a way that was purely comforting. He needed to be sure they both listened and understood even if it scared him to say it all out loud.

“I gotta tell you something…”

So he told them everything, even about Dave and how the man, who or whatever he was, had somehow cured Nathan’s eyes and removed him of his mark, severing his doubts so that he was free of the Veil, but only for now.

Jim mentioned that he had thought Nathan felt different but hadn’t wanted to say anything for fear of it just being that he was so happy to have Nathan back with them.

They also informed Nathan of one of their own discoveries over the past couple weeks.

The Gatehouse wards failing wasn’t actually localized to Nathan.

They seemed to be failing in general, and no matter what Alex did to try and strengthen them, nothing worked.

They’d finally tested the wards outright by having Alex punch Sasha in the shoulder as hard as she could, but nothing happened.

There really wasn’t anything for them to do with this new information except wait, just as they had when all signs pointed to Jim as some great evil. The thinning of the Veil was having more consequences than they could have anticipated.

But something Nathan hadn't realized until Sasha smiled supportively and told him so was that what Malak had revealed was actually the best news they could have ever been given.

"Don't you understand, Nate?" The incubus combed his fingers through Nathan's short, mussed hair.

"Now we know. No more guessing, no more wondering.

And the power is all yours, not Malak's, because you get to make the choice and we know you'll make the right one.

You never have to fear some awful evil sneaking up on us in the night to turn Jim or me against you.

We're going to be okay. Jim is going to be fine, just Jim, the rest of his life, powers be damned. Because you can make sure of it."

Nathan doubted he could have loved the incubus more than he did at that moment, finally able to see the light instead of only darkness on their ever encroaching horizon.

He had the power to choose. Him. No sidhe influence or abilities involved, and there was no way in Hell he was going to give Malak what he wanted.

Walking up to the doors of the Gatehouse felt like the damn Green Mile.

No one was waiting inside to judge Nathan, but he was good enough at judging himself to take every staring pair of eyes as disapproval rather than support.

Of course, the second Nathan stepped inside the building he realized what a fool he had been.

Alex had Nathan wrapped so tight in an embrace the moment he crossed the threshold that Nathan's fight or flight instincts actually flared, wondering at first if he was under attack.

Then he recognized the familiar warmth, the solidness of her small but strong form, and he was able to relax.

It amazed Nathan that the feel of Alex didn't bring up memories of his time in the Veil.

Not this time. Iain followed in kind, embracing Nathan tentatively.

It was almost as if Nathan had just woken up from his time in the Veil and he was getting a second chance.

The hard part was explaining once again everything that had happened since he left.

He didn't go into detail concerning the encounter with Malak, not fully, but he was honest about what it all meant, and what he felt they needed to do.

He didn't get the chance to look up and see how Alex and Iain were reacting, because suddenly there was a chirp, and shuffling, and when Nathan looked down he realized a fluffy chimera was climbing up his leg.

At first Nathan could only stare, watching as Wally's tiny human hands clutched his pant leg and climbed, not hissing or growling or looking at all frightened of him.

She was sniffing madly though, curious, determined, crowding in around Nathan's body.

Wally immediately began snuggling in closer, demanding to be stroked as she purred loudly.

"Hey there, girl," Nathan huffed out a whisper, petting Wally as she wanted and scratching her fluffy grey head. "Not so freaked of me anymore, huh? Guess that's gotta count for something." He smiled, pulling Wally closer and letting her burrow into him, seeking a warm nest against his stomach.

Nathan felt his chest swell with the greatest relief, and then, finally, he looked up and took in the faces of his friends.

Jim, Sasha, Alex, Iain—his extended family, really.

None of them looked frightened. None of them looked ready to lead the lynch mob against him—him, Nathan , antichrist extraordinaire.

They were all smiling, pleased at Wally's reactions as if the chimera had summed up exactly how all of them were feeling despite what might lay ahead.

Sasha was still incapable of turning him. That hurt more than Nathan could say, to have that option just gone. It might have taken Nathan until he was a roguishly handsome and well-preserved 60-year-old before he was able to agree to being initiated, but he knew one day he would have. One day…

He tried to tell himself that this was different than when his bounty was closing in, because they could take thirty years to figure a way out of it, there wasn’t any rush, they didn’t have a time limit except Nathan’s own natural ticking clock.

And with that kind of time they were certain to figure something out eventually.

Walter still hadn’t appeared to him, which worried Nathan, but he’d needed to return to the Gatehouse first and wasn’t quite ready to leave the comfort of its walls again to see if he could call for his Spirit Guide. He vowed to try first thing in the morning.

Later, as Nathan headed with Sasha to the main downstairs lounge in the hopes a zombie movie or something equally entertaining might be on TV, he turned and noticed the silver chain of the saint medallion glittering back at him.

Sasha wore it beneath his shirt against his skin, closer to his heart, he had said, when he’d put it on after Nathan gave it to him. Nathan smiled.

“Hey!” Jim called just as they were about to open the lounge’s sliding door. He jogged down the hall after them. “Are you sure you two are going to stay up? It’s pretty late. Iain and Alex headed up to bed. I was thinking of doing the same.”