Page 3 of Sidhe (The Incubus Saga #3)

When the pizza arrived, no one came to their door, but Jim’s cell phone buzzed from a text. He left and came back a little later with cans of soda and a couple boxes just for them. Nathan had wanted to ask for a beer or maybe something harder, but he didn’t want to bother Jim with that.

As it turned out, the group hadn’t done much of anything the past week, just waited for Nathan to return.

Nathan was able to surmise that whatever the deal was to save him it meant he had only had to serve those seven days as a Shadow Immortal—what was a year to him—and then Malak had agreed to return him.

At what cost, Nathan wasn’t ready to find out.

There was only one bed in the room, but Jim brought in a sleeping bag. Nathan tried to say it wasn’t necessary, but Jim just shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal.

Jim and Sasha must have assumed or seen that Nathan was tired, because they kept trying to get him ready for bed.

Maybe they were just tired too. They still talked even when the lights were off—Jim from the floor, Sasha next to him.

Nathan didn’t do much talking, which he knew must have seemed strange to them, but he just liked hearing the sound of their voices, going on about nothing and laughing and being them . He didn’t want to wreck that.

He tried so hard to stay awake. He thought of leaving after he was certain the others had fallen asleep, thought of walking around a little or going downstairs, but he couldn’t bear the thought of running into anyone else and having to interact. If he went outside…he’d have to face Walter.

So he snuggled against Sasha’s side, the incubus’ arm draped lazily over him in sleep. The sound of Jim’s light snores were comforting, the closeness of both of them. But Nathan knew that if he fell asleep he would be vulnerable. He just had to stay awake a little longer.

It wasn’t real , he told himself for the millionth time, his eyes so sore and heavy . It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. It. Wasn’t. Real.

But he knew that was a lie.

“Just say it, Nathan. Just say it and this will all be over.”

Hands everywhere. Sasha’s. Jim’s. The feeling of being surrounded, trapped. He didn’t try to move away when lips pressed to his neck.

Jim’s words fell hot on his ear. “All the pain, Nathan. The remorse. The guilt. I can take it away. Don’t you want it to be like it was?

Just the three of us. Unstoppable. I can give you anything, Nathan.

I will give you everything you ever wanted.

Release. Finally release if you’ll just say the words. ”

“Okay, Jim,” Nathan said. “Okay…”

Nathan didn’t wake up screaming. He woke up drowning, his tears so thick, soundless as they were, that he had soaked the pillow. He was shaking again, but there were arms to hold him, too many arms that weren’t too many when it was the Jim and Sasha he loved.

He shook and sobbed as they held him, clinging wherever he could get a tight hold and not caring how or when Jim had crawled into bed with them.

It was like Maine when Jim and Sasha were five years old in adult bodies and they had slept all curled together.

Now Nathan was the little boy. Now Nathan was the one who needed comfort.

He couldn’t tell them. He could never tell them how much he had longed for the strength to hate them.

If it had been anyone else, some bastard sidhe torturing him with every device known to man or beast, Nathan could have borne it, could have stood his ground and told the fucker to stick it where the sun don’t shine. But not Sasha. Not Jim. Not when it was real. Not when it was them .

They had always been his weakness. And Malak had used that. To win.

Nathan didn’t fall back asleep after that. He pretended to so Jim and Sasha would think he got some decent rest, that he was okay, but if the past year could haunt him while he was awake then he knew it would be like reliving it all over again every time he slept.

When morning came, Nathan waited until both Jim and Sasha were out of bed before he feigned a groggy awakening and said, “There gonna be breakfast down there?” if only to further ease their concerns.

Several minutes later he was alone in the bathroom; dressed, clean, teeth brushed. He couldn’t seem to get his hair right. It was all smushed to one side of his head from his restless sleep. He couldn’t remember the last time he had cared to style it.

He had left the door slightly ajar for his sake as well as for the others.

They were waiting for him, being so patient with him.

It would have been the type of thing to get on his nerves once upon a time.

All they knew was that they had rescued him from the Veil.

They didn’t know they had also rescued him from them .

Part of Nathan thought that it should have been obvious, that he should have been able to tell the difference.

But as much as the real Jim and Sasha soothed him, being back wasn’t enough.

He still found himself flinching at the initial sight of them, waiting for a blow, an order, a word of false, perverse love.

“Nathan?” It was Jim, hand on the door as he peeked inside the bathroom. “You know…you don’t have to do this now. If you want to take another day…” He trailed to give Nathan the chance to take the out.

But he couldn’t. If he did then he might never step foot outside that room again. “I’m okay. You guys go ahead. I’ll be right down.”

“You sure?” Sasha asked, his disembodied voice coming from beyond Jim.

“Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. I just…” Nathan couldn’t stop staring at his reflection.

“I just need a sec.” And Jim and Sasha agreed because they didn’t want to push him anywhere but in the direction he wanted to go.

Only Nathan didn’t know where that was. So he took his second, his minute, five .

Any longer and they would be back to get him.

Staring pained into his own eyes, Nathan felt immediate hatred boil up inside him. What happened, what he had been through and done, it wasn’t real. But it was , and what would they think of him if they knew? If they knew how easily he had been broken?

Nathan wanted to call for Walter, but he knew he couldn’t inside the Gatehouse.

So he pushed away from the sink and went back to the main part of the room.

Their life was strewn about him. Jim’s duffle.

Sasha’s. A pair of Jim’s jeans in the corner.

Sasha’s leather jacket left on the hastily made bed.

A leather jacket. But Sasha’s had been ruined, left to rot in the caves in Colorado.

This jacket was new, black instead of Sasha’s usual dark brown.

Nathan picked it up in his hands, held the lining to his face, and breathed in.

It smelled new, sweet and musky from the leather but also so much like Sasha.

Nathan had hoped that being so close to his incubus the night before, and later when Jim was there too, that the familiar smell of them would ground him. But it hadn’t been enough.

Glancing up, Nathan saw a closet on the far side of the room.

It was open. The clothes he had been wearing the night Jim—no—the night Malak took him were hanging on a hook on the door.

The only thing missing was his father’s wedding ring on its silver chain because he had that around his neck again where it belonged.

But something was wrong. There wasn’t any blood on his clothes. There had been blood. Nathan remembered so clearly. He remembered it. So much blood. It had been everywhere that night when Jim—

“ No ,” he said aloud.

It wasn’t real, it wasn’t real.

Nathan closed his eyes tight, Sasha’s leather still in his hands. He tried so hard to stay here , be here . But when he opened his eyes again…he was there .

A subtle shuffling of feet alerted Nathan to their nearby watcher, interrupting any chance he had at saying something monumental to Sasha to mark the moment.

He couldn’t ignore Jim, but he was afraid to look up, afraid of what he might see.

When he finally did look, there was only those all-white eyes and a blank expression. And the white never went away.

Jim laughed and the sound was terrible. Cruel. Like there was something funny about how Sasha could have died, how Nathan might have been drained by the spriggan using his own lover’s body. As if there was something funny about Jim Awakening.

“Jim?” Sasha braved the question first, still shaking from what the spriggan and then Jim had put him through. “Are you okay?” He tried to stand but Nathan held him back, shaking his head, knowing what Sasha didn’t.

Something had gone wrong. Tapping fully into his powers, defeating the spriggan, maybe it had even been the act of saving Nathan from Malak, had undone all their hard work to keep Jim, Jim . Whatever the final catalyst had been, he wasn’t Nathan’s brother anymore.

Nathan didn’t want to believe it. Not for him. Jim couldn’t have turned because of him, but there was something far darker than he could have ever predicted burning strongly within Jim now.

“What’s wrong, Nathan?” Jim said, ignoring Sasha. “You should be happy. You should be thanking me. Malak can’t have you now.”

Something shuddered deep in Nathan’s gut at the sight of Jim glowing with power, at the sound of those words. It was the cave all over again. “Jim…”

“Don’t worry, Nathan,” Jim said as if his voice were soothing and not so horribly tainted. “You don’t understand now. But you will.” Those blank white eyes looked to Sasha. He grinned. “No time like the present. Right, brother?”

All Nathan could think was, “Run!” but he couldn’t move or even form the word. He clung to Sasha, both of them still crumbled on the floor, as Jim knelt in front of them.

“Run?” Jim said mockingly, slipping into his mind all too easily.

“Nathan, why would you need to run from me? If you stay, if you follow me and do as you’re told, I’d never hurt you.

Don’t you know that? Malak can’t have you because you’re mine .

In time I’ll be even stronger than him. I can give you everything, Nathan, and no one will ever be able to hurt us again.

No one will ever be able to leave us. Don’t you want that?

All you have to do is choose me, Nathan.

Choose me and I promise…I won’t take Sasha by force. ”

Nathan tried to pull Sasha behind him, to protect him somehow. “Jim…snap out of it. This isn’t you.”

“I’m your family, Nathan. I know you need Sasha. I know how you love him. I love him, too. But what happens next is up to you. Choose me. Just say it. Say you belong to me.”

Nathan didn’t understand. Had the sidhe blood twisted Jim so much finally that all he saw were his basest desires and a sense of possession?

This was the part of Jim that wanted to claim the world.

Not to save it or even control it, but to make it pay for everything he had ever had to suffer through.

Nathan could understand that, he really could, but he couldn’t let Jim do this—he couldn’t let him become this.

Without fear or reservation, he leaned right into Jim’s face, pleading with whatever gods may exist that Jim wasn’t too far gone to bring back. His gaze was steady, his voice a rock of resolve as he said, “I don’t belong to anyone.”

Jim’s eyes flashed brightly, his sneer growing into a snarl that made him look ugly in his viciousness.

Then Sasha was screaming.

Nathan turned to Sasha as the incubus pulled away from him and writhed on the floor, in some unknowable pain, like he’d been that night when they first met Malak. Nathan froze under Jim’s sudden use of power when he tried to comfort the incubus, unable to move or even react as Sasha screamed.

“Do you understand yet, Nathan?” Jim spat through clenched teeth as he wrenched Nathan’s arm and forcefully pulled him to his feet, leaving Sasha on the carpet. “I’ll leave him be…this time,” he said, and Sasha’s pained cries slowly died away, “but others might not be so lucky.”

Nathan didn’t have the strength to match Jim’s. He didn’t have a weapon that would ever be enough. Even if he could get to one, Jim could just control him to put it down again. Sasha was equally helpless.

As the weight of what was happening struck Nathan fully, realizing all he might have done to prevent this if only Jim and Sasha hadn’t tried to save him , Jim made a promise close against his ear, “ Sasha might not be so lucky…if you refuse me again.”

Nathan was shaking so hard, Sasha’s jacket had fallen from his hands and was draped over his lap.

He was on the floor, head and shoulders back against the frame of the bed.

The room spun and refocused in front of him.

He wasn’t there anymore, he was here, he was here , but ‘there’ would always be with him.

He had to go downstairs, had to show everyone that he was fine, he was okay, he was back just the way he had left them.

Even though all of that was a lie, he had to make them believe it.

He tried to get up off the floor, but his hands had clutched again the smooth black leather of Sasha’s new jacket, so like his wings, Nathan thought, and he couldn’t loosen his grip enough to get a grip on himself.

He couldn’t have understood before. He understood now. He had been dead. Dead and gone in the Veil, a Shadow Immortal at Malak’s mercy. That’s why it was so hard. Living . Living was hard. And as much as he knew he had to get back up, had to keep going, he wasn’t sure he wanted to anymore.