Page 12 of Sidhe
Nathan shuddered.
“Nate?”
He tried to push Sasha away. It was too clear, too vivid. Nathan’s hands running up Sasha’s back and down again with just the tips of his fingers. Sasha shivering back against him. Their pace fast, faster. Sasha reaching for him. Sasha’s…clawsdigging into his skin.
Nathan tried to shake the vision off but it was too late; he had conjured it himself and now the image was marred, changed, taken from him as the Sasha in his mind turned from the bar and fell upon him.
“Nathan!”
Hehadpassedoutat some point, maybe from the blood loss, maybe just from the pain, he didn’t know, but pain stung him now at every pore of his body as he came to. He couldn’t move but he was shivering, his body in shock. He used what strength he had to look down his body, laid out on the cold floor, and all he saw were jagged cuts and ruby red.
The sobbing beside him told him why it was over. Sasha had gotten what he needed, enough to pull him from frenzy, and he was whole, human, back to his senses, sitting naked beside Nathan. His pale skin was smudged with red though it otherwise remained unmarred and perfect. Sasha’s legs were pulled in tight to his chest and he was sobbing into his knees.
Nathan wanted to reach for him, tried, but his hand only gave a slight twitch at his side. The incubus had certainly done a number on him but it hadn’t been his fault. Sasha needed to know that. Nathan needed to tell him.
But another voice broke into their bloody little world before Nathan could try.
“I told you this would happen,” Jim said, walking up to them so coolly and crouching down in front of where Sasha was shivering and rocking, “and it can happen as many times as is necessary. Do you understand?”
Slowly, Sasha’s head tilted up from his knees to look at Jim. His eyes, although blue, were reddened around the edges from crying.
“Will you choose me now?”
It was a trick. Nathan knew now. Jim had known all along the choice Nathan would make, that he wouldn’t be able to kill Sasha and that Sasha, after this, would see no other way out.
Nathan couldn’t let Sasha give in. He couldn’t allow this to go the way Jim wanted. But he couldn’t do anything, couldn’t move or speak for all the pain.
He saw Sasha nod, unable to look at Nathan beside him and see the damage he had inflicted. Jim stood and reached out to Sasha then. And damn everything…because Sasha accepted.
“Nathan,stop!”
“Nathan!”
“Hold him!”
There was no here, there was onlythere. Nathan could see it when he closed his eyes, when he opened them—everywhere. This was the illusion, this far worse torture, something that promised peace but never gave him more than the meagerest taste of it.
Sasha had called for the others and they were there, but Nathan could only see Jim, startled and frightened in front of him. There were hands grabbing him everywhere, hands holding back his arms, hands around his waist, hands waving in front of his face to bring him back to his senses. Nathan had no sense. Jim had taken everything.Everything.
“You promised!” he screamed as he leapt toward his brother’s form, only to be lurched back by a collective grip. “You said…it wouldn’t hurt anymore. You said you’d take it away! But I still feel it. I feel it…and its worse.Worse. Why won’t you stop, Jim, why won’t you leave me alone…?” He trailed, his knees going weak. He fell and the hands holding him loosened.
The voices of the others were a chorus around him and finally he started to hear them again. “Nathan, it’s okay!”
“You’re here! You’re safe!”
“No one’s hurting you!”
“Come back, Nate.”
“It’s over.”
“No, it’s not…” Nathan shook his head, glancing up again to see Jim standing a ways away in front of him, looking confused and saddened. “I’m still there…”
He could feel panic creeping ever closer and he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t fight it. A feral sound left him as he threw the loosened hands from his body and jumped to his feet. He rushed Jim, knocking his brother back against the bar, hands gripped in the front of his shirt, not realizing that with the kind of harsh intent behind his actions, the Gatehouse wards should have blasted him backwards.
“You promised!”
Jim’s eyes swam with tears. And they were blue—blue. “Nathan…”
