Page 82 of Incubus
Jim and Sasha had already gotten to their feet, freed from the vines just as he was. Sitting up sharply to join them, Nathan smacked his head into the makeshift shelter that had been created to cover them from the rain. He cursed as he laid back down again and slid out from underneath the canopy, using the branches to hoist himself back to his feet.
“Tell me who holds the bounty on my brother!” Jim was demanding of the dryads, already standing over them both while they screamed and writhed on the damp ground. They were glowing as if they were burning too, but Nathan's eyes were drawn to the power glowing in his brother's hands, not like fire but crackling with tiny electrical currents.
“Jim,whoa,” Nathan said, rushing around to his brother, but stopping cold when he saw how Jim’s blue eyes were flashing brightly and very prominently slit. Nathan looked to Sasha standing nearby whose brow was furrowed and hands looked like they very much wanted to reach for one of the shotguns.
And not just for the dryads.
“He’s fine,” Nathan said to the incubus, before turning back to his brother. “Jim! Slow down!”
“Tell me!” Jim cried, either unaware or ignoring Nathan as the power flared in his hands.
The female dryad’s screams rose loudly and then died as she went still, which only increased the writhing from the male.
“Jim!” Nathan tried again.
“Tell me!”
“You'll…you'll never find them. Not unless they want to be found,” the male spoke in labored gasps. “And believe me…your powers would mean nothing if you did."
"They?" Jim repeated in a snarl. "So there's more than one of them?Tell me what you know!"
A sickly smile twitched at the dryad’s mouth, his body smoldering even as the rain fell and Jim's power lessened to let him speak. "No one knows their true name…or how to summon them. Only the Messenger killed by your brother. But there is only one.Theyare only one."
"What does that mean?" Jim pressed.
The dryad cast a pained look at his fallen companion and laughed bitterly. "You're the key, you see? We should not have underestimated how close you are. With you…everything will crumble.”
"You mean the Veil," Sasha said, inching closer to Jim and the dryads on the ground. “Tell us what’s going on. How are dark sidhe breaking out of the Veil?"
Nathan inched closer as well, but was still wary of the remaining crackling of power hovering about his brother's fingers.
“I only know...that the Veil started to grow thin twenty-four years ago," the dryad said, "and now...it is finally thin enough for passage."
“Twenty-four?” Jim repeated. “The year I was born?”
“Is there some kind of plan being carried out?” Sasha asked. “Something with changelings? Why is this happening now?”
“If you really want to know...you can figure it out for yourself,” the dryad sneered. He was still smoldering, the heat turning all of his green coloring into burnt shades of brown and black like a scar upon the ground.
Towering over the dryad, Jim stood somehow taller and menacing with sparks crackling at his fingertips. "You say that like you have a choice.Tell me who holds the bounty over Nathan.Tell me everything you know!" he commanded, and Nathan recognized the power in Jim’s voice that he had heard when his brother controlled him and Gabriel in the Gatehouse.
The sound made Nathan tremble. He was so close to his brother, he could touch him, but he felt leagues away. The dryad was cowering now, so suddenly that Nathan had to wonder if there was something about Jim that had changed, something that went deeper than he could see.
But even though the dryad could not overcome Jim's power, all he said was, "If you face the keeper of the bounty…it will already be over."
Jim went so stock-still and rigid that it made Nathan twitch to do something,anything. He was ready to speak up again, take his brother’s arm, tackle his brother to the ground if he had to, but it was too late.
The dryad screamed and the next thing Nathan knew he was being hurtled away from Jim to the edge of the clearing. His back struck a tree and he crumbled, everything going dark for longer than he was probably aware. When he coughed and gasped the wind back into his lungs, it was no longer raining, and the clearing was twice as large as it had been before.
"Nathan, what happened?!" Walter shouted, there beside Nathan and reaching out as if he wanted nothing more than to be able to embrace him.
It was like what had happened in Minnesota with the street signs, only this was every tree in a huge radius, bent outward allaround them. Nathan could see Sasha getting to his feet yards away on the other side of the clearing. Jim remained where he had been at the very center, on his knees, trembling.
“Jim!” Nathan called as he painfully lurched to his feet and ran through the slick and sloppy mud. He didn't have time for Walter now. Jim wasn’t moving other than tremors shaking his shoulders. Even his eyes were closed.
As Nathan drew closer, he saw what remained of the dryads scattered around Jim like kindling. Sasha was approaching much more slowly, and Nathan took notice when the incubus pulled one of the shotguns out of the mud. He held up a hand toward Sasha, pleading, but Sasha wasn’t moving with any real conviction. The incubus held the shotgun without threat of using it and nodded at Nathan to approach Jim first. Any other seal wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot Jim long before now.
Nathan had never been so thankful that Sasha was also an incubus.
