Page 6 of Sidhe
He had left the door slightly ajar for his sake as well as for the others. They were waiting for him, being so patient with him. It would have been the type of thing to get on his nerves once upon a time. All they knew was that they had rescued him from the Veil. They didn’t know they had also rescued him fromthem.
Part of Nathan thought that it should have been obvious, that he should have been able to tell the difference. But as much as the real Jim and Sasha soothed him, being back wasn’t enough. He still found himself flinching at the initial sight of them, waiting for a blow, an order, a word of false, perverse love.
“Nathan?” It was Jim, hand on the door as he peeked inside the bathroom. “You know…you don’t have to do this now. If you want to take another day…” He trailed to give Nathan the chance to take the out.
But he couldn’t. If he did then he might never step foot outside that room again. “I’m okay. You guys go ahead. I’ll be right down.”
“You sure?” Sasha asked, his disembodied voice coming from beyond Jim.
“Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. I just…” Nathan couldn’t stop staring at his reflection. “I just need a sec.” And Jim and Sasha agreed because they didn’t want to push him anywhere but in the direction he wanted to go. Only Nathan didn’t know where that was. So he took his second, his minute,five. Any longer and they would be back to get him.
Staring pained into his own eyes, Nathan felt immediate hatred boil up inside him. What happened, what he had been through and done, it wasn’t real. But itwas, and what wouldthey think of him if they knew? If they knew how easily he had been broken?
Nathan wanted to call for Walter, but he knew he couldn’t inside the Gatehouse. So he pushed away from the sink and went back to the main part of the room. Their life was strewn about him. Jim’s duffle. Sasha’s. A pair of Jim’s jeans in the corner. Sasha’s leather jacket left on the hastily made bed.
A leather jacket. But Sasha’s had been ruined, left to rot in the caves in Colorado. This jacket was new, black instead of Sasha’s usual dark brown. Nathan picked it up in his hands, held the lining to his face, and breathed in. It smelled new, sweet and musky from the leather but also so much like Sasha. Nathan had hoped that being so close to his incubus the night before, and later when Jim was there too, that the familiar smell of them would ground him. But it hadn’t been enough.
Glancing up, Nathan saw a closet on the far side of the room. It was open. The clothes he had been wearing the night Jim—no—the nightMalaktook him were hanging on a hook on the door. The only thing missing was his father’s wedding ring on its silver chain because he had that around his neck again where it belonged.
But something was wrong. There wasn’t any blood on his clothes. There had been blood. Nathan remembered so clearly. He remembered it. So much blood. It had been everywhere that night when Jim—
“No,” he said aloud.
It wasn’t real, it wasn’t real.
Nathan closed his eyes tight, Sasha’s leather still in his hands. He tried so hard to stayhere, behere. But when he opened his eyes again…he wasthere.
Asubtleshufflingoffeet alerted Nathan to their nearby watcher, interrupting any chance he had at saying something monumental to Sasha to mark the moment. He couldn’t ignore Jim, but he was afraid to look up, afraid of what he might see. When he finally did look, there was only those all-white eyes and a blank expression. And the white never went away.
Jim laughed and the sound was terrible. Cruel. Like there was something funny about how Sasha could have died, how Nathan might have been drained by the spriggan using his own lover’s body. As if there was something funny about Jim Awakening.
“Jim?” Sasha braved the question first, still shaking from what the spriggan and then Jim had put him through. “Are you okay?” He tried to stand but Nathan held him back, shaking his head, knowing what Sasha didn’t.
Something had gone wrong. Tapping fully into his powers, defeating the spriggan, maybe it had even been the act of saving Nathan from Malak, had undone all their hard work to keep Jim,Jim. Whatever the final catalyst had been, he wasn’t Nathan’s brother anymore.
Nathan didn’t want to believe it. Not for him. Jim couldn’t have turned because of him, but there was something far darker than he could have ever predicted burning strongly within Jim now.
“What’s wrong, Nathan?” Jim said, ignoring Sasha. “You should be happy. You should be thanking me. Malak can’t have you now.”
Something shuddered deep in Nathan’s gut at the sight of Jim glowing with power, at the sound of those words. It was the cave all over again. “Jim…”
“Don’t worry, Nathan,” Jim said as if his voice were soothing and not so horribly tainted. “You don’t understand now. Butyou will.” Those blank white eyes looked to Sasha. He grinned. “No time like the present. Right, brother?”
All Nathan could think was,“Run!”but he couldn’t move or even form the word. He clung to Sasha, both of them still crumbled on the floor, as Jim knelt in front of them.
“Run?” Jim said mockingly, slipping into his mind all too easily. “Nathan, why would you need to run from me? If you stay, if you follow me and do as you’re told, I’d never hurt you. Don’t you know that? Malak can’t have you because you’remine. In time I’ll be even stronger than him. I can give you everything, Nathan, and no one will ever be able to hurt us again. No one will ever be able to leave us. Don’t you want that? All you have to do is choose me, Nathan. Choose me and I promise…I won’t take Sasha by force.”
Nathan tried to pull Sasha behind him, to protect him somehow. “Jim…snap out of it. This isn’t you.”
“I’m your family, Nathan. I know you need Sasha. I know how you love him. I love him, too. But what happens next is up to you. Choose me. Just say it. Say you belong to me.”
Nathan didn’t understand. Had the sidhe blood twisted Jim so much finally that all he saw were his basest desires and a sense of possession? This was the part of Jim that wanted to claim the world. Not to save it or even control it, but to make it pay for everything he had ever had to suffer through. Nathan could understand that, he really could, but he couldn’t let Jim do this—he couldn’t let him become this.
Without fear or reservation, he leaned right into Jim’s face, pleading with whatever gods may exist that Jim wasn’t too far gone to bring back. His gaze was steady, his voice a rock of resolve as he said, “I don’t belong to anyone.”
Jim’s eyes flashed brightly, his sneer growing into a snarl that made him look ugly in his viciousness.
Then Sasha was screaming.
