Page 37 of Sidhe (The Incubus Saga #3)

At some point life had to work itself out. Nathan was a firm believer in that. He sort of had to be lately what with him trusting for the first time since he was twelve years old that the universe was not out to get him.

At least he sure hoped he was right about that since this case was heading to Hell in a hand basket really fucking fast .

Sasha hadn’t been able to get across anything else to them after letting them know that there was for sure a second creature and that the creature was for sure an incubus. Solrin had come back over to them right then to interrupt.

As they walked to the diner, Nathan could tell there was something more Sasha wanted to explain to him and Jim other than just that an incubus was draining these boys before the nach…ate them, but that would have to come later.

Part of Nathan almost thought it would save them time and effort to just come clean with Solrin, but every time he thought that way he would catch the guy giving Jim or Sasha a strange, calculating look and he shut down that thought process dead in its tracks.

“Perhaps the nachzehrer is with the other creature,” Solrin said as they ate. “If we find one of them, we will find the other. I do agree that seeking the nachzehrer directly is the best course since we know what to look for on that account,” he nodded toward Sasha.

The guy had ordered a BLT without the ‘T’ and was eating it a little too politely for Nathan’s liking. It’s not like he needed to impress anyone. Nathan tried to make that clear by chomping on his burger with extra gusto. It was actually pretty good food for such a sketchy looking place.

“I want to check with the families first though, while it’s still daylight,” Jim said, picking excess fat off pieces of his roast beef.

“If we don’t find anything tonight, at least then we’ll have a better idea of who to watch out for as a potential victim tomorrow.

Would it be better to split up again or stay together for that? ”

Solrin put down his BL-no-T, looking suddenly nauseous. “You spend a lot of time talking with people,” he said with some distaste.

Nathan blinked at him. “Uh, yeah, man, it’s how you learn what’s going on, what to watch out for, and who you need to protect.” At least that’s the impression Nathan had gotten working with Sasha for so many months. “You saying you never talk to people when you’re on a case?”

The bandages over Solrin’s eye were starting to bother Nathan.

He hated that half the time he couldn’t see all of the guy’s face or really read him.

He wished he knew what the bandages were for.

Was the eye missing or just injured? And what about all the other bandages?

The dark grey of Solrin’s button down made his skin and hair look even starker than usual, unnerving Nathan all the more.

“Not…never,” Solrin said slowly, his head bowed a little as he spoke, like he didn’t want to risk eye contact unless it was on his terms. “But I usually avoid people. ” He grimaced, both at the notion of ‘people’ it seemed and at having to admit that.

There was something of self-loathing in Solrin that Nathan couldn’t help feeling some kinship for.

“Hell, half the time I wish we could skip that step too. People are nuts, right?” He winked.

“But it’s for those same crazy people that we’re doing this.

Somewhere along that long line of psychos there are some good people needing to be saved. All part of the job.”

Solrin nodded somewhat reluctantly, like he either didn’t entirely agree that there were good people, or maybe didn’t agree that it was a seal’s job to save them.

“Tell ya what,” Nathan said, swiping a fry from Jim’s plate since he and Sasha had both eaten all of theirs already.

“You can sit this one out if you want. We’ll talk to the families and you can start in with scouring for places the nach might be hiding.

But only if you swear you’ll call for us if you find something. Deal?”

A tangible sigh of relief seemed to come from all of Nathan’s companions. Even so, Solrin scrunched his face, eyeing Nathan as he said, “I do not have a cell phone.”

The guy had a laptop and a Harley but no phone. Figured. “Okay then,” Nathan said, fishing out his own cell. “Take mine. I’ll have Jim and Sasha with me so we’ll use one of theirs to call you if we find out anything, and you can do the same. You at least know how to use one, right?”

It almost got Nathan laughing when Solrin shot him a rather incredulous look.

“Gee, man, don’t bite my head off. You’re tech savvy , okay? Here, take it.” He handed Solrin the cell. “After we’re done with the families, I’ll meet up with you to reclaim my cell and our two groups can finish looking over the town from different ends. Where did you want to start?”

Solrin pocketed Nathan’s phone after briefly checking that he could easily find Jim and Sasha’s numbers.

“I will start back at the cemetery. We didn’t find any evidence of the nachzehrer residing there, but it had to have crawled out of its grave at some point.

Perhaps the caretaker knows more than he admitted.

Or I may find some clues as to where the creature went. ”

Nathan was glad they’d get a chance to discuss what was going on alone, so he didn’t protest when Solrin finished his food quickly and made a hasty departure for the cemetery.

Rather than risk Solrin questioning them later about remaining in the diner too long, they walked back to the car and drove to the house of the first victim, Jared Logan. They parked but none of them got out.

“Okay, spill,” Nathan shot at both Jim next to him and Sasha in the back.

“There’s an incubus killing these boys, some nach zombie thing eating them afterwards, and we seem to be of the consensus that telling Solrin about this would be bad.

What is going on?” Nathan doubted it was just general species sympathy on Sasha’s part.

After all, he had hunted his own aunt when he found out she was killing.

So considering there was sympathy on Sasha’s face now, Nathan knew there had to be more to this than black and white.

“We can’t hunt him,” Sasha said, leaning forward toward the front seats. “The incubus…the deaths aren’t his fault, they’re accidents. We know that for a fact, or a nach never would have been created. But Solrin won’t care about that. If he finds this kid first, he’ll just try to kill him.”

Accidental death , Nathan repeated in his mind, which would mean that the incubus had probably been feeding from the first kid all normal and consensual-like and then something had gone wrong.

He had taken too much and left the kid for dead.

No bite marks on that first kid and no sign of a struggle either. His body had just stopped working.

“He panicked,” Sasha said. “Afterwards, he must have…shut himself away somewhere until he finally just frenzied and did it all over again. He must be staying in one place, huddled up somewhere barely moving. That’s why I picked up on him after a while even though I don’t think he’s right here in town.

Maybe he would have been able to get over it, would have been okay, but I’m guessing the nach, that first kid Jared, found him and is haunting him like some god damn ghost. He’s caught in a loop and he doesn’t know how to get out of it. We can’t…we can’t just kill him.”

“Hang on a sec,” Nathan stopped Sasha. “The deaths have been happening two weeks apart, not a month. Isn’t a month frenzy territory?”

Sasha looked to the side, and Nathan got the feeling that there would always be things about being an incubus that he would never understand.

“That actually was the other clue for me. He must be a homogenous incubus,” Sasha said, to which Jim and Nathan both blinked at him.

“It means he only feeds from one gender. And I don’t mean he just prefers to sleep with boys.

He has to. For him, feeding from women wouldn’t work, even if he was frenzied.

“It’s a condition,” Sasha tried to explain.

“Rare. It manifests during the change and can severely handicap or even kill a young incubus. Imagine that this kid maybe…grew up with three others, one guy and two girls. During the change the other three were interchangeable with each other but he could only get energy from sleeping with the guy. Well, there would have been times when he wouldn’t have been able to be with the guy if that incubus was with one of the girls, so…

he basically wouldn’t have gotten all the energy he needed.

If there wasn’t another guy at all in this scenario, he would have starved to death. ”

“I think I get it,” Jim said. “So he’s weaker than the average incubus because his condition meant he couldn’t feed enough during the change?”

Sasha nodded. “And now he has to feed twice as often. Hence…two weeks. Also explains why all the victims are so similar. Usually, a frenzied incubus wouldn’t hunt, it would just attack the first person it came upon.

This kid had to be patient, wait for these boys to come along and then attack, even when he was frenzied. ”

“Kid…” Nathan repeated, since they kept throwing that pronoun around. “So we’re assuming the incubus is newly out of the change, same age as the victims, like…sixteen, seventeen?”

“Eighteen at the most,” Sasha said.

“Could we maybe get a hunt at some point that doesn’t involve teenagers, coz I’m sort of getting sick of this scenario.” Nathan tried to pass the comment off as a joke, but it fell flat, especially when he thought of what might have happened to Leven.

Jim, too, was purely sympathetic as he said, “Sasha, I agree with you that this kid probably doesn’t mean to hurt anyone, but this is four deaths later, not just one, or even two because he freaked for a while and made another mistake.

Maybe it’s more than just panic now. Maybe he’s…

no longer in his right mind.” Jim tried to sound appeasing, explaining himself as gently as he could, but it wasn’t surprising to Nathan that Sasha immediately rose up to the defensive.

“You don’t know what it’s like ,” Sasha hissed, his eyes damp and sparkling unnaturally blue.

“I’ve been there. I’ve done what he did.

And not frenzied or possessed,” he said pointedly, “but wholly in my right mind. Tell me when you have ever experienced something like that?” Sasha’s voice broke even though he was seething at Jim, trying to stay angry instead of shattered.

“Sasha…” Nathan started to interject.

“Don’t,” Sasha breathed out bitterly, “and please don’t tell me how you do understand because of the things you did in—” He trailed, more like bit his tongue since he had obviously been about to say ‘the Veil’, but even then Nathan wouldn’t have gotten angry at him over it.

The incubus already looked guilty for having reacted so strongly.

He glanced at each of the brothers remorsefully.

“I’m sorry, but…even though you can tell me that what I did was an accident, and that this kid is different because he’s moved onto something worse, you don’t know.

I could have ended up just like him. I was halfway there when Shi found me. ”

Sasha looked stricken for having let that slip, but now that he had said it, he sucked in a breath and didn’t take it back.

“After that girl,” he said softly, “I did exactly what this kid is doing now. I hid away. Didn’t eat, or drink, or move for almost a month.

Shi found me two days from frenzy. If she hadn’t…

” He didn’t need to say that he would have fallen to the same cycle as this boy, and it made Nathan feel suddenly sick.

For so long he had been able to forget that somewhere deep down Sasha had just as much self-loathing in him as they did.

“Okay,” Nathan said, looking pointedly at Jim a moment to tell his brother that he damn well better go along with this.

“Good thing Solrin should be sticking to the cemetery for a while then. If this kid is outside the city limits somewhere, maybe you two can find him while I keep Solrin busy looking for the nach. You find him…maybe you can talk him down, baby, without Solrin ever knowing what the second creature was.” Nathan didn’t know if that was a good idea, but it certainly felt right when Sasha looked up at him with a pained but grateful smile.

Jim didn’t protest, just smiled in agreement and offered Sasha a nod to show his support. If they were wrong, they could handle one little incubus. The real hard part would be keeping Solrin away while Jim and Sasha looked for it.

Nathan could handle that.