Page 121 of Incubus
“You can use your shirt…to tie around the wounds…and stop the bleeding. You’ll have to tear it.”
Sasha didn’t even pause to think. He lifted his hands from Nathan’s chest and dug into the cotton of his shirt with sudden claws, tearing it down the middle easily. Nathan wondered why Sasha wasn’t in his incubus form completely, since holding the glamours had to take some kind of effort, but the iron messing with Sasha’s brain seemed to be affecting that too.
Nathan hissed through his teeth, biting back a cry when Sasha tied the torn T-shirt tight around his chest. He already had scars there from Sasha's claws, along with his dark fae mark. Soon, he would be able to add shotgun holes to the collection.
Getting to his feet wasn’t easy, not when it was like the blind leading the blind with Sasha trying to help. But stupid or not to move on, a few shotgun pellets were not going to slow Nathan down, not when his brother was still walking into a trap.
He knocked the shotgun out of the way when they reached it, propped up in front of the door that led out of the room. There was light peeking through the crack underneath the door, enough that Nathan could finally see the shadowy figure of Walter with him.
Kicking open the door with some of his last remaining strength, Nathan found the final room to be brightly lit and much larger than the others, almost as large as the main area at the front of the building. All of the doors led here, like some demented funhouse, and Gabriel was at the center just as Walter had said, waiting patiently in the middle of the room with nothing but a handgun.
Nathan had lost the gun he had been holding, but he reached for the spare tucked into his jeans and took aim just as Gabriel did the same. Nathan would have fired and been done with it, consequences be damned, if Jim hadn’t just then burst forth from one of the other doors.
Gabriel turned on Jim immediately, but Nathan breathed some relief that Jim didn’t look like he had met the same fate with a shotgun.
“I thought you would escape with the incubus, Nathan, but all the better for it to end like this,” Gabriel said as heloweredhis gun. “Look for yourself. See the truth about your brother.”
Nathan's green eyes met Jim's blue from across the room. Nathan had no idea what Gabriel was talking about until his gaze drifted lower and he saw what was drawn on the floor.
In front of every door leading into that final room was Entrapment Runes like the ones they had used on the Muses. Nathan and Sasha were standing in one too. It was possible to draw runes to hold humans, but these were clearly designed for dark fae.
As Jim glanced down to discover the traps as Nathan had, he huffed. “This is your big plan? I'm not the same as a dark fae. I’mnot. And I am not Awak—” Jim cut off as he walked forward and met an invisible barrier at the edge of the trap.
Nathan felt the air rush out of his lungs.
Gabriel beamed. “Not Awakened? Maybe you are, maybe you aren't, but you are certainly close enough for the magic in those runes to sense your evil. I understand if even you didn’t truly believe the truth until now. Your seeming innocence is what swayed your brother and others. But you have to see the truth now. You arenothuman.”
Staring as Jim tried unsuccessfully again and again to leave the trap, Nathan forgot his wounds, forgot the weight of Sasha at his side, and just walked. He kicked a scratch in the paint of the entrapment rune beneath him to break the circle as he pulled Sasha along after him.
It didn’t make sense. Nathan had seen Jim walk through Entrapment Runes before. Even with the Muses surely Jim had passed through those traps when they made them andafterwards. The only thing that was different between then and now was time.
“You understand now too, Nathan,” Gabriel said as Nathan drew closer, unafraid because Nathan had also lowered his weapon and was focused on Jim. “He is not your brother anymore. His powers taint him, give his soul over to the Devil himself—”
“Shut up,” Jim cried in a low growl like Nathan had never heard from his brother before.
Jim was shaking, his eyes shimmering, and soon, his pupils became unsurprisingly and unfairlyslit.
“You must be stopped,” Gabriel went on, ignoring Jim’s words and that dark fae glare as he raised his weapon again to point it squarely at Jim’s chest.
Nathan couldn’t move. He didn’t know what to do, what wasright, but even though he wanted nothing more than to give his brother the benefit of the doubt, he was not prepared for what happened next.
Gabriel cocked the hammer of his gun but he didn’t fire. Instead, his hand began a slow curve toward his own temple.
Jim looked on, his eyes glowing as if they were on fire, slit and wild, with death in their gaze. “You’re right,” he said, his voice too low, too dark. “But not by you.”
The gunshot startled Nathan, the gore left behind, the sight of Gabriel falling and then just there, dead on the floor. Nathan couldn’t breathe, feeling Sasha tense and clutch him tighter. His heart sank further when he realized that Walter was nowhere to be found—as if banished by a dark sidhe.
“Nathan,” Jim called, still low, still dark, but with something else, something that sounded likeJim, dripping with anguish and apology.
Nathan looked at his brother,his brother, Jim, damn it, even if he was caught in a trap built for dark fae. Those eyes werehis brother’s eyes, the same eyes as the ones Nathan had dried when they were kids, the same eyes that glared at him when the teasing went too far, and laughed with him, and looked at him with understanding that no one else could ever grasp. It shouldn’t matter that they were slit.
Nathan couldn’t bear the look his brother was giving him now, he couldn’t bear what he knew was about to happen, that Jim wasn’t going to give him a choice.
“Nathan,” Jim said again, pleading. Mournful. “Shoot me.”
Chapter 48
Shootme.
