Page 77 of Sidhe (The Incubus Saga #3)

Jim

Jim was outside the main doors of the Gatehouse with a line of people along the perimeter. He turned to Sasha with a wary expression. “Is everyone in position on the roof?”

Sasha nodded dismissively. “Where’s Nathan? It’s been almost half an hour. We’re ready, as ready as we can be, just sitting around waiting . Jim—” But Jim didn’t hear if the incubus said anything more. He was too busy pitching to the side as a pulse of energy struck him hard.

A moment later the only thing keeping Jim upright was Sasha’s grip on his arm.

Everything around him was blurry and spinning, as if he had been hit by some sort of shockwave.

No one else seemed affected, but Jim knew something was wrong.

He also knew without a doubt that it had something to do with Nathan.

“Something’s happened,” he managed to say to Sasha, and then jerked out of the incubus’ hold, running haphazardly toward the main stairs, pushing past anyone who got in his way. Jim knew Sasha was right on his heels, he just prayed everyone else stayed at their posts.

They reached the bedroom and found a closed door, Jim unable to comment more than casting Sasha a worried look. He tried the knob, only to find that Nathan had locked them out when the world was falling apart all around them.

“Nathan!” Jim pounded once on the door before stepping back and kicking hard enough to send the whole thing flying off its hinges into the room.

Then it hit him, as potent as he had felt downstairs: a shockwave, a soul-deep pulse from inside the room that spoke to Jim of wrong , of dark and evil and everything going straight to Hell with Nathan at its center.

And there he was inside the room, facing away from them staring at his hands like he barely recognized them as his own.

Sasha was too impatient, maybe hadn’t felt it yet, maybe couldn’t, but Jim knew the truth too well to just let Sasha walk into this unprepared.

Jim pulled him back before he could take a single step.

He shook his head when Sasha looked to him questioningly, because this couldn’t be what he thought, what he felt and knew to be true, but it was.

That wasn’t his brother inside the room.

“Nathan…” Jim choked out mournfully.

The figure of Nathan cocked his head just slightly, as if Jim’s voice was what finally caught his attention, even though the door was a fine mess in front of the bed.

From behind, Nathan looked perfectly normal, still wearing jeans, a button down, and a T-shirt underneath. But when he turned, smirk already on his face, amusement and satisfaction lighting up every part of him, Jim felt his heart stop in his chest to see red on black eyes.

“Jim…” Nathan’s voice said like a hiss, like he was hungry for the name.

“No…” Jim said. “I can’t believe you’d do this, Nathan. Why ?” He trembled with disbelief and horror. Sasha did as well; trembled as he stared, shocked into silence.

Turning more fully, slowly and rigid like he didn’t quite know how to control his body, Nathan gave a delirious laugh as if it was all a big joke.

“Why?” he repeated, looking at his own hands again, fascinated.

“Had to save everyone, Jim. Had to buy time. Now we got all the time in the world.” He closed his eyes, breathed in as if something in the air was wonderfully sweet, and exhaled into a wider grin.

Those awful eyes centered on Jim as Nathan flexed his fingers.

“What’s wrong? It’s okay, Jim. You don’t have to worry anymore,” Nathan said as he began to walk assuredly toward them.

Jim pulled Sasha back, guarding him from Nathan—guarding him from Nathan —and blocked the doorway. “You tricked Nathan into this somehow, so you can…what? Wipe us out faster from the inside, no one the wiser ‘til it’s too late?”

That had to be it. Nathan fell for some sort of trap and now they were screwed. But how could Nathan have done that? Jim had believed so strongly that Nathan knew what he was doing, that he would get them through this. How could he have given Malak what he wanted?

“Nathan…” Sasha finally spoke brokenly from behind Jim, “please tell me you didn’t. Tell me this is a lie. How could you do this to us? Why would you do this?”

“Sasha,” Nathan suckled on the incubus’ name with the same pleasure he had said Jim’s, looking to Sasha with longing as he continued toward them steadily, “weren’t you listening, baby?

I had to buy us time. Malak’s army would have killed everyone without backup to help us.

Now it won’t matter. Now I can send them away.

I had to save everyone, don’t you understand?

But I’m still me,” he said, looking back to Jim, his expression so dark and strange that Jim shivered down to his toes, his stomach churning with the image of Nathan not Nathan.

“I’m still me. I’m in control. Me . I’ll show you. ”

Jim flinched as Nathan walked up to them, and even though Jim had no intention of letting Nathan out of the room, he couldn’t seem to stop himself from moving out of Nathan’s path, shifting away to avoid contact, anything to avoid having to touch his brother that wasn’t his brother.

Nathan walked right past them, leaving Jim and Sasha smushed in the doorway, paralyzed and unable to do anything.

Nathan cocked his head at them, pausing outside the room.

“It’s okay. Really. I’ll show you,” he said again and, reaching up with his right hand toward his neck, he tightened what was suddenly a red tie, surrounded by Malak’s black suit, tailored to Nathan perfectly as it took the place of his layers and jeans.

Nathan released another laugh before heading down the hallway.

The first thing Jim thought of once Nathan was out of sight was that he had to find iron . He even released Sasha and turned back inside the room to find something, any kind of weapon, not really thinking, not capable of thinking without fear of losing control.

Sasha grabbed his arm to hold him still.

“Jim, no. Even if we could…iron didn’t hurt Malak before.

He’s more powerful now. They are. Like that.

You can feel it, can’t you?” Sasha sounded as numb as Jim was forcing himself to feel, more so, like if he let one drop of emotion in it would break him into fragments.

“It’s just like Maine…inside that room…” Jim said. They’d never talked about it, what they’d seen inside the Animus House’s ‘future’ door.

“I know,” Sasha said, hushed. They hadn’t known then how to tell Nathan that death wasn’t what they’d seen for him, but something much, much worse.

But Jim had kept another secret: it’s also what he’d seen in the Veil.

He’d been with Malak all along, and Malak had prepared him for this, for what Nathan would become.

Jim hadn’t believed it when the last of his memories returned to him, but now, what he’d so feared, what a part of him had relished in while in the Veil like he had in the cave in Colorado, was real and happening right before their eyes.

Of course Jim knew iron wouldn’t work. Nothing would work now.

Nothing could stop Malak if he was one with Nathan, all his power in the Veil let loose on Earth.

But even if there was nothing to be done, without having to discuss it or even say a word more to each other, Jim and Sasha bolted out of the room to follow after Nathan.

It made an awful kind of sense why Nathan would do what he did.

They had stood no chance, not for all their planning and protection.

So Nathan had made a deal, the only option he saw, in the hopes that he could save everyone even if it cost more in the end.

It made Jim so angry, because it was the same damn pattern all over again, and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how it was worth it.

Sasha was surprisingly stone-faced as they ran. It helped Jim maintain the same, because he had to, they had to . They had to find a way out of this, a way to save Nathan.

Again.

Clad in Malak’s black suit and red tie, Nathan was moving deliberately slowly down the stairs when they caught up to him, every last person in the Gatehouse taking notice of the change, and knowing exactly what it meant.

Most of them had seen Malak, knew that suit, those eyes, and those that hadn’t seen him had been told.

They were all just as paralyzed as Jim and Sasha had been, merely parting, backing away to give Nathan room as he descended the stairs and continued through the bar toward the front doors.

Jim and Sasha slowed to a walk behind him, waiting for him to make some sort of move, not knowing what they could possibly do regardless. Even Alex stood staring in disbelief that Nathan was no longer Nathan, something they all knew he had to have chosen.

When Nathan reached the doors, open as they were to look out on the battlefield that was waiting, he stopped just inside the doorframe.

With a tilt of his head behind him, for just a moment Nathan’s new eyes caught Jim and Sasha in his gaze, his smile wicked as he raised a hand into the air, said, “It’s all gonna be okay,” and snapped his fingers.

The shockwave this time was palpable to everyone and nearly strong enough to topple Jim over.

It pulsed out of Nathan in all directions but mostly forward, rapidly flying across the land toward Solrin’s approaching army.

It was visible, a visible shockwave moving across the land like heat waves rippling on the horizon.

When it struck the army, even though the dark fae were still far off, Jim could see all too vividly how it banished them faster than blinking, erasing them clear off the map.

“You see?” Nathan called out loudly, meaning for everyone to hear him apparently, but then he lowered his voice again, facing Jim and Sasha as he walked back inside. “Do you understand why I had to do this? Everyone’s safe now. It’ll be okay now. It’s all going to be—”