Page 21 of Sidhe
“You’ll still be here in the morning…” he mumbled to no one. “Then I won’t be.”
Ithadbeenalmosttwo days since they tried his cell. Nathan kept it on silent, let it buzz on the seat beside him that once upon a time would have sat a Jim or an incubus. He would glance at it from time to time, the screen displaying that he had “3 missed calls” then “11 missed calls” then “27.” He thought they would never stop: Jim, Iain, Alex, even Shiarra eventually, though she had already left.
Not Sasha though. The calls never came from Sasha. Of course they didn’t. Nathan had pushed, and Sasha had railed back against him, but Nathan had won in the end. Nothing beat walking away. It was the one thing Nathan knew Sasha would never forgive him for.
A week had gone by, almost two now. They had called so consistently in the beginning. Nathan half expected when he first took off that Sasha would come flying after him, wings spread on the wind in pained desperation. But Sasha hadn’t.Doing that wouldn’t have stopped Nathan anyway, it wouldn’t have changed anything.
He just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t fake himself into living a life he barely remembered. He wasn’t that strong.
There was never a real destination in mind. He just drove. He hadn’t gotten all that far from Missouri really, having just passed some dinky town called Widener, Arkansas as he headed in the direction of Memphis. Half his time was spent in whatever motel seemed most out of the way, the other half in the car. He only thought to eat when he was halfway to passing out. Most of the time he didn’t even turn on the radio.
So it was deep into the twilight hour, three AM maybe, only local roads and no other cars in sight. Nathan had thought about turning around so many times, about picking up that phone whenever it buzzed. But he couldn’t. He didn’t belong with them anymore. He’d just ruin everything little by little until they hated him for it, until Sasha left because he didn’t remember how to love either, and Jim just gave up.
If it wasn’t that then Nathan knew he would somehow be the reason Jim finally lost his way, embracing some darker part of him that Nathan had seen come to life in the Veil. If Nathan wasn’t there then he couldn’t be to blame. If he wasn’t there then he would never have to see his world crumble. Again.
Two days without a call. Had they given up? Were they finally going to let him go?
Nathan squeezed the steering wheel too tightly in his hands and glanced up at the rearview mirror. His eyes were green. Green. And he’d keep them that way until his body gave out on him. Already, his tired and drawn face resembled more the image Nathan remembered from the Veil, gazing emptily back at him.
His necklace, with his father’s wedding ring like a beacon of everything he had been meant to protect, hung prominent against his chest, glittering back at him from his reflection.
Grabbing it suddenly with a tight fist, Nathan yanked hard enough to break the chain. He tossed the necklace onto the passenger seat next to his cell phone. He couldn’t go back. They didn’t want him back, they’d see that soon. Their stopped calls already meant they wouldn’t search forever. He didn’t even feel regret anymore; it was easy not to feel anything. Finally, two weeks gone, he was certain he had made the right choice.
“I’m so happy to hear that, Nathan.”
Chapter 8
Thesoundofthatvoice surged panic through Nathan’s chest like he hadn’t felt in so long. His eyes jumped wide to the rearview mirror. There was no mistaking the figure he saw in the backseat. Red on black eyes glittered at him from a handsome, smirking face—blond hair, black suit, red tie.
Before Nathan could react, Malak was already reaching for him, pulling him fast and rough over the seats into the back. Damn Nathan for not bothering with his seatbelt. Or maybe he had and that just didn’t matter where Malak was concerned.
Nathan had a moment of sensible panic, where he feared the car would pitch toward the ditch and flip, but even as he was being kidnapped into his own backseat, he could see that the car was somehow continuing to drive on its own. Then the irrational, overpowering panic came back to Nathan as he found himself laid out on the leather, the dark fae king himself climbing on top of his body and holding him pinned with a surprising amount of weight for so trim a figure.
“I’ve missed you,” Malak practically purred.
It was natural to struggle, to try and push Malak away with how his lean body just seemed to be everywhere, but it did Nathan little good. Malak was strong so much more immovably than either Sasha or Jim.
“I was waiting for you, Nathan,” Malak licked at his lips with what might have been a forked tongue, “and finally…finallyyou let me in.”
Nathan suddenly had much more personal knowledge of that tongue. The kiss was fierce, the way Nathan knew he had been with Sasha before he left—possession with glee in the act of owning. It was like the first time Nathan had been kissed by this sidhe, like a rush of dry ice.
“S-Stop!” Nathan sputtered, jerking his head to the side to escape Malak’s mouth. He was certain his eyes flashed black as he snarled, “Get the fuck off me, you sick son of a bitch!”
“Now, now,” Malak chided, still grinning gleefully, “don’t act like you didn’t expect this. I had to wait for the moment you whole-heartedly made your choice, Nathan, but you did. Haven’t you realized by now that all your choices eventually lead tome?” He whispered hot against Nathan’s face, his image shimmering as he slowly became the female version with long, red hair and yellow on black eyes instead. “Youbelongto me, Nathan.”
Pressure overcame Nathan as if Malak were pushing on his chest. There were pulses of that pressure, flashes in the dark of the car that Nathan recognized as memory pressing in on him. It was the visions of his time in the Veil but they were different, sharper, focused.
Nathan saw Jim and Sasha, but Jim’s eyes weren’t white or amber and Sasha’s weren’t his normal slit-pupil red. Their eyes were Malak’s eyes—red on black, yellow on black—like Nathan’s dreams from long ago; his visions of a future made real.
He understood what Malak was showing him, how in every moment that he was with Jim or Sasha in the Veil of course it was really Malak—Malak touching him, torturing him, twisting him into his—her—theirimage. And Nathan had bent and broken just like a good boy.
“Why…?” Nathan had to ask, closing his eyes against the visions even though it did nothing to banish them. “Why them? Whythat?”
The car continued to move along the empty road, smooth and expertly steered by unseen power. Nathan was lying flat on his back, his legs slightly tipped down into the crevice between the seats with the master of dark sidhe sprawled over him. “Because,” Malak grinned—Nathan knew the bitch was grinning even though he had his eyes clenched tight, “it was a…necessaryevil. To get you here. Now.”
“For what?” Nathan still didn’t know and it was obvious his time to solve the mystery before it was too late had already passed. “Why me? Why do you wantme?” He opened his eyes and even though he could still feel that strange pressure like a great weight on his chest, the visions stopped, leaving only the form of the female Malak above him.
“Your scope is so small, Nathan.” Malak shook her head in disappointment, a hand snaking down Nathan’s chest. “You think you know something of the bigger picture, but you always count yourself out, or give yourself such a small role to play. Jim is merelyanimportant aspect to the grand scheme. Don’t you understand yet?You’rethe prize, not a consolation.”
