Page 63 of Sidhe
It was the last thing Nathan heard before the wind was brutally knocked from him, Sasha sending him flying out of the cellar to land several yards away back inside the house.
By the time Nathan could breathe again and focus enough to get up, the cellar door was closed. He didn’t have to try the door to know it wouldn’t do him any good. But he had to anyway. He couldn’t let Sashado this. To hell with jealousy, it had nothing to do with that. Sasha could die down there!
He was seconds from pounding on the door when he heard the first scream.
Panic twisted in Nathan’s gut as he thought the sound had come from the cellar. Then he realized it was coming from somewhere else in the house. It wasn’t Jim or Solrin, which could only mean one thing: it was the nach, and if it was screaming then that meant the others had found it. Considering the creature sounded a hell of a lot more angry than injured it also meant that they might be in serious trouble.
Nathan knew Jim wouldn’t use his powers unless there was no other choice, the risk of Solrin seeing him and overreacting being too great. Nathan had to help them. At least with them he could do something. With Sasha…
Nathan pounded on the door once anyway, just to be sure Sasha heard him and knew that this was not something he would ever forgive the bastard for, not if he never came back.
Teeth gritted, one fist clenched and the other still tight on the knife he had never lost, Nathan cast the cellar one last angry glare, silently praying,don’t you dare let him die on me, Walter, and then he was off, grabbing the bag of stakes he’d droppedwhen he landed up the stairs, and sprinting toward the other side of the house.
Chapter 23
Thescreamsofthenachzehrer made it painfully easy to follow toward the fight. Nathan turned corner after corner, trying to find the best way to the sounds.
“Jim!” he cried as he finally spotted the door they had to be behind, kicking at it viciously. The door flew open, revealing a large empty lounge with several other doors leading into it and the clear, sobering sight of Jim, Solrin, and one ugly-ass zombie kid facing off against them.
“Nathan!” Jim looked over at him, startled, and obviously fearful once he realized Nathan was alone. It looked as though Jim and Solrin had lost their stakes and were in desperate need of the extras around Nathan’s shoulder.
“He’s strong!” Solrin cried as the nach turned its milky eyes on Nathan.
The kid actually looked a lot like the pictures Nathan had seen of Jared Logan, only not very well-preserved. This was movie zombie, and damn was it ugly. The kid’s skin was sickly,shriveling on his bones. He was as torn up, bloody, and dirty as the incubus in the cellar. The incubus…
Sasha.
Fuck.
Nathan couldn’t afford to be distracted. Not when the nach turned its sights on him.
Readying a stake of his own, Nathan tossed the bag of extra stakes over the nach’s head toward Jim, who caught it easily, then took up his knife in his other hand. One clear shot was all Nathan needed.
He rolled as the zombie lunged for him, kicking out with his legs to unbalance the creature and knock it to the floor. It worked, the nach landing on its back with a solid thud. Nathan immediately scrambled up to position himself to stake the thing…only to discover there wasn’t anything there.
“Nathan!”
A sharp pain exploded in Nathan’s back as something struck him, and he went down face-first into the old wooden floorboards. This zombie wasn’t just strong; it was freakingfast.
Pained as he was, Nathan rolled again, but the nach was practically on top of him in seconds. He did the only thing he could without enough leverage to stake the creature—he lashed out with his knife.
Almost immediately, a hand from forearm to fingertip fell onto Nathan’s chest in a decaying lump of dead flesh. “Fuck!” Nathan tried to scramble out from under the nach, and to escape that nasty severed hand, as the zombie began screaming loud and piercing again, looking furiously at his missing limb.
Nathan jumped to his feet, shaking off until the offending appendage fell back to the floor.
“Grab his legs!” Solrin called as he and Jim rushed it, trying to get the better of the nach while it was finally distracted long enough to catch.
Jim descended on the nach’s legs, and Solrin grabbed for its arms, getting a little too close to where the hand had been chopped off as far as Nathan was concerned. He grimaced.
“Nathan.” Solrin looked up at him sharply.
While Nathan rushed back over to them, Solrin tried to get at one of the vials of holy water, successful only in that it fell out of his pocket onto the nach’s chest. The vial’s cap must not have been secured because it began to leak, sizzling through the remains of a T-shirt onto dead skin and making the nach scream even louder.
With his stake at the ready, Nathan dropped down beside the others. One thing about rotting flesh compared to the living was that pounding in a stake took a lot less effort—smooth like gross, gooey butter.
“Mine!” keened the nach, struggling up against Jim and Solrin’s hold, his voice doubled and echoing like a banshee, so damn shrill that it stung Nathan’s ears. “Mine!” He looked at Nathan in challenge, like he knew, like he knew Nathan had been to see the incubus. “He’s—!”
One good stab with the stake silenced the creature instantly. Nathan had no remorse for it either, not for something that was already dead. “No more meals for you, pal,” he grit out, thinking of the incubus, ofSasha, of all those other boys that had died because some damn zombie wouldn’t stay fuckingdead. None of it had been the incubus’ fault, but Nathan doubted he would still be able to think that way if Sasha ended up the next victim.
