Page 111 of Sidhe
“Nathan…” Sasha finally spoke brokenly from behind Jim, “please tell me you didn’t. Tell me this is a lie. How could you do this to us? Why would you do this?”
“Sasha,” Nathan suckled on the incubus’ name with the same pleasure he had said Jim’s, looking to Sasha with longing as he continued toward them steadily, “weren’t you listening, baby? I had to buy us time. Malak’s army would have killed everyone without backup to help us. Now it won’t matter. Now I can send them away. I had to save everyone, don’t you understand? But I’m still me,” he said, looking back to Jim, his expression so darkand strange that Jim shivered down to his toes, his stomach churning with the image of Nathan not Nathan. “I’m still me.I’min control.Me. I’ll show you.”
Jim flinched as Nathan walked up to them, and even though Jim had no intention of letting Nathan out of the room, he couldn’t seem to stop himself from moving out of Nathan’s path, shifting away to avoid contact, anything to avoid having to touch his brother that wasn’t his brother. Nathan walked right past them, leaving Jim and Sasha smushed in the doorway, paralyzed and unable to do anything.
Nathan cocked his head at them, pausing outside the room. “It’s okay. Really. I’ll show you,” he said again and, reaching up with his right hand toward his neck, he tightened what was suddenly a red tie, surrounded by Malak’s black suit, tailored to Nathan perfectly as it took the place of his layers and jeans. Nathan released another laugh before heading down the hallway.
The first thing Jim thought of once Nathan was out of sight was that he had to findiron. He even released Sasha and turned back inside the room to find something, any kind of weapon, not really thinking, notcapableof thinking without fear of losing control.
Sasha grabbed his arm to hold him still. “Jim, no. Even if we could…iron didn’t hurt Malak before. He’s more powerful now.Theyare. Like that. You can feel it, can’t you?” Sasha sounded as numb as Jim was forcing himself to feel, more so, like if he let one drop of emotion in it would break him into fragments.
“It’s just like Maine…inside that room…” Jim said. They’d never talked about it, what they’d seen inside the Animus House’s ‘future’ door.
“I know,” Sasha said, hushed. They hadn’t known then how to tell Nathan that death wasn’t what they’d seen for him, but something much, much worse.
But Jim had kept another secret: it’s also what he’d seen in the Veil. He’d been with Malak all along, and Malak had prepared him for this, for what Nathan would become. Jim hadn’t believed it when the last of his memories returned to him, but now, what he’d so feared, what a part of him had relished in while in the Veil like he had in the cave in Colorado, was real and happening right before their eyes.
Of course Jim knew iron wouldn’t work. Nothing would work now. Nothing could stop Malak if he was one with Nathan, all his power in the Veil let loose on Earth. But even if there was nothing to be done, without having to discuss it or even say a word more to each other, Jim and Sasha bolted out of the room to follow after Nathan.
It made an awful kind of sense why Nathan would do what he did. They had stood no chance, not for all their planning and protection. So Nathan had made a deal, the only option he saw, in the hopes that he could save everyone even if it cost more in the end. It made Jim so angry, because it was the same damn pattern all over again, and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how it was worth it.
Sasha was surprisingly stone-faced as they ran. It helped Jim maintain the same, because he had to,they had to. They had to find a way out of this, a way tosave Nathan.
Again.
Clad in Malak’s black suit and red tie, Nathan was moving deliberately slowly down the stairs when they caught up to him, every last person in the Gatehouse taking notice of the change, and knowing exactly what it meant. Most of them had seen Malak, knew that suit, those eyes, and those that hadn’t seen him had been told. They were all just as paralyzed as Jim and Sasha had been, merely parting, backing away to give Nathan room as he descended the stairs and continued through the bar toward the front doors.
Jim and Sasha slowed to a walk behind him, waiting for him to make some sort of move, not knowing what they could possibly do regardless. Even Alex stood staring in disbelief that Nathan was no longer Nathan, something they all knew he had to have chosen.
When Nathan reached the doors, open as they were to look out on the battlefield that was waiting, he stopped just inside the doorframe. With a tilt of his head behind him, for just a moment Nathan’s new eyes caught Jim and Sasha in his gaze, his smile wicked as he raised a hand into the air, said, “It’s all gonna be okay,” and snapped his fingers.
The shockwave this time was palpable to everyone and nearly strong enough to topple Jim over. It pulsed out of Nathan in all directions but mostly forward, rapidly flying across the land toward Solrin’s approaching army. It was visible, avisibleshockwave moving across the land like heat waves rippling on the horizon. When it struck the army, even though the dark fae were still far off, Jim could see all too vividly how it banished them faster than blinking, erasing them clear off the map.
“You see?” Nathan called out loudly, meaning for everyone to hear him apparently, but then he lowered his voice again, facing Jim and Sasha as he walked back inside. “Do you understand why I had to do this? Everyone’s safe now. It’ll be okay now. It’s all going to be—”
Nathan jerked, cut off as an arrow pierced him in the heart, seemingly out of nowhere. Their recruits were armed with all sorts of weapons, everything they could think of that they could either make or tip with iron. Of course it didn’t matter what the head of the arrow that struck Nathan was made of; it couldn’t faze him now.
He looked down at it, at the arrow stickingout of his chest, and laughed. He didn’t even bother pulling it out, just snappedoff the end while the rest of it melted, falling away like ash and disappearing.
“Someone has an itchy trigger finger,” Nathan said with a slowly widening smile, looking about the bar intently as he searched for whomever had fired at him. “Are we going to have a problem? I just saved all of your lives.”
Much like days ago when chaos overtook the bar while Nathan had been trying to say his peace about seals and non-humans working together, everything erupted too quickly—too much noise, too many people, and most of them were yelling and gunning right for Nathan. No one cared that the dark fae were gone. They only saw Malak’s eyes,Malak’sinfluence radiating out of Nathan, and leaving them no choice but to act.
It was pure, immediate anarchy without the Gatehouse wards to stop it, and Jim could do nothing but stand there, watching as Nathan was shot, stabbed,everythingand a million things more, as the crowd swarmed. It would have been horrifying to witness if Jim didn’t know the worst was still coming. He felt Sasha grab his wrist and then move down to lace fingers and hold his hand, gripping so tight it made Jim cringe.
There was no point in moving, in trying to intervene. Alex understood that. So did Shiarra as she landed just outside the doors, having leapt from the roof, with Sasha’s old friends, and Ula and Danny all huddling behind her. But others attacked, seals and fae alike.
And then, after a simple pulse of power, all those others were gone.
It happened so fast, Jim barely even blinked and there was just empty space, just Nathan standing where he had been before only no longer surrounded. Then they were plunged into darkness, the power gone when the pixie, Serileth, was sent away with the others. Yet somehow they could still see Nathan,amazingly perfect and unmarred from all the ways he had been attacked.
“Never liked crowds anyway,” Nathan said, straightening his tie, though even that hadn’t been disturbed. Then with another snap of his fingers the power surged to life and the lights returned.
Jim supposed he should be happy there wasn’t any blood, but it still nauseated him wondering what had become of everyone.
“What?” Nathan shrugged, almost normally, looking around the room at those he had allowed to remain as they stared at him, horrified.
Jim took quick stock of who was left. There was him and Sasha, Alex, and Shiarra at the doors, but their other friends were gone.
