Page 117 of Incubus
“Leave? Nathan…I wouldn’t leave. I’d never…never just leave,” Sasha answered, sounding strangely young, like he was crying, or trembling, or...hurt.
“Sasha? What’s going on?” Nathan pressed, his heavy emotions falling prey to further worry.
“Nathan?” Sasha said again, like it was the first time, like he wasn’t sure if he was talking to Nathan at all. “I…I don’t know where I am. I’m so…so tired. Nathan?”
“I’m right here,” Nathan said, terrified as he lifted his eyes to Jim for some kind of reassurance, but Jim’s eyes were filled with terror too. “Sasha, what happened to you? Are you okay?”
There was a long pause, too long for Nathan to bear, and then the exhale of breath before someone spoke on the other end of the line was different. “I’m afraid the incubus is not well at the moment,” said a voice that Nathan recognized only too easily.
“Gabriel,” Nathan growled, so angry and scared that he was grinding his teeth hard enough to hurt. “What did you do to Sasha?”
Jim’s eyes were wide with similar panic as he leaned closer to the earpiece of the phone, listening beside Nathan.
“The incubus hasn’t been very forthcoming about which apartment you are in, or anything about the changeling’s powers,” Gabriel said, “so I have had to be a little…unfriendly."
“If you’ve laid a finger on Sasha, you sick son of a bitch…” Nathan threatened.
“Your compassion for monsters really is remarkable, Nathan. The incubus is alive, but I don’t have to keep him that way. He means nothing to me.”
Nathan wanted to strangle Gabriel through the phone for dismissing Sasha like that, like trash to be rid of. “Sasha trusted you once, damn it,” he spat at the phone. “He wanted to trust you. He’s never hurt a human being, not once.”
“I'm sure you believe that,” Gabriel said. “Now listen to me. Deliver your brother to the last empty building in the Warehouse District and I will let you go unharmed.”
“And what about Sasha?”
“The incubus will live for as long as he is useful.”
Then the line went silent.
Almost instantly the phone dropped from Nathan’s hand to land uncaringly in the snow at his feet. “We have to gonow,” Nathan said, and lunged for the driver’s side door.
“Nathan, hang on!” Jim called after him, scooping up the forgotten phone as he rushed around to the passenger side, though he spoke over the top of the hood to keep Nathan from leaving just yet. “We’re playing right into Gabriel’s hands if we go.”
“Gabriel wantsyou," Nathan said, slamming a hand down on top of the hood and leaving a handprint from the snow still falling around them. "Sasha’s just bait. And bait’s expendable.”
They climbed into the car at the same time, their doors slamming shut with a unified resonance. That sound might have spurned Nathan on, but now there was a hollow ache where a third door slam should be.
“Do you have a plan?” Jim asked.
Nathan turned the key in the ignition and the car started with a glorified purr. “Plan? Yeah, I got a plan. Get Sasha. Get out. Don’t die. With a whole lot of 'kill Gabriel' in between. Sound good to you?”
“That’s your plan?”
“Yep.”
“Well, it’s childish, vague, and suicidallystupid.”
The change in Jim’s tone gave him away, so Nathan waited for the punch line.
“Good to know you’re feeling like yourself again,” Jim finished, smiling sideways at Nathan in a valiant attempt to make up for Nathan’s lack of wisecracking.
Nathan forced an answering smirk. “What can I say, Jim? I aim to please.”
Chapter 46
Nathanrecognizedthetypeof building they would be dealing with as soon as they reached the Warehouse District. It was empty, probably had been for months or even years, meaning that unlike a working warehouse or factory, it was filled with large empty rooms and few hiding places.
Either Gabriel was very stupid or he had everything planned out so well that he didn’t need hiding places.
