Page 76 of Sidhe
“Just think of it as a…gift.” Puck shrugged. One side of his mouth rose a little higher than the other, making his smirk wicked.
He snapped his fingers and, in that moment, Nathan felt the world around him go black.
Puckdidn’tknowhowlucky he was that Nathan actually felt pretty good when he blinked awake and sat up.
“Nathan!” Jim called, right there beside him.
Nathan was on a bed, his and Sasha’s bed, and some guy with black hair was lying next to him, turned away. Nathan didn’t give the other figure much mind at first. “What the hell happened? Everyone okay?” he asked his brother. There was no one else in the room and Nathan couldn’t help being worried by that.
“I…thought you two would want to be alone for a while,” Jim said. “Nathan, do you understand what happened?”
“Huh?” Nathan scrubbed a hand back through his hair. Damn he felt good. Even though he was still groggy, he feltamazing. “No. What happened? What did Puck do to me? And who the hell is this…guy…” Nathan trailed as soon as he took a closer look at the man beside him, his stomach plummeting to his toes. It wasn’t some stranger.
It wasSasha.
“Holy shit,” Nathan gasped, rolling Sasha more onto his back so he could look at him. Sasha looked okay, just sleeping, but he had black hair, black eyebrows, and something else about him made it so that Nathan just knew, “He’s human…”
“Yeah…” Jim said slowly, like it wasn’t the most amazing thing ever.
Nathan turned to look at his brother again and saw that Jim’s brow was tightly knit. “Dude, what? He’s okay, right? Got dark hair like his dad since he’s human now, but so what? I can live without the red. He’s not hurt or anything, is he?”
“No, Nate,” Jim assured him. “He just hasn’t woken up yet. But, uhh…see, Sasha being human isn’t the only thing Puck did.”
“What else?”
Jim stood and backed slightly away from the bed, looking toward the bathroom. The door was open and the light was already on. “Go look at yourself, Nathan.”
Panic settled somewhere low in Nathan’s stomach. Of course Puck had also done something to him, or he wouldn’t havepassed out. But whatever Puck had done, it was bad enough that Jim couldn’t just tell Nathan; he needed to see it for himself.
Nathan suddenly had this horrible image of his face hideous or disfigured. It would be just like Puck, a gift with a price. Not that Nathan would ever have asked for Sasha to be human. He really did love Sasha just as he was. But still. This made things easier.
Slowly, Nathan threw his legs off the bed and got up. He walked toward the bathroom in a way that kept him out of line with the mirror until he was ready. When he was, he looked back at Jim a moment, still seeing that worried look, then stepped into the bathroom and looked up.
Nathan was at first startled because he didn’t look at all bad, and for a second he wondered if Jim was just messing with him. Then he took a few steps closer to the mirror. Something was…different. He looked brighter and healthier than ever before. And his eyes, they were shimmering so green they almost…glowed.
“Ohfuck.”
Chapter 27
EventhoughNathanhadn’tfelt it up until now, that pressure in his body like when Sasha almost turned him so long ago—that pull within him, stretching him, changing him—was suddenly right there. An aftershock maybe, his body needing to see it before it actually registered the feeling, like having to look at a wound before you felt any pain.
An incubus. Nathan was an incubus. And Sasha washuman.
“Nathan!”
Nathan didn’t hear Jim at first, not really, he was too busy gaping horrified at how his body started to shift. His skin paled to white, his hair lengthening to be shaggy around his ears instead of his usual short spikes. His eyes flashed red with slit pupils, and black horns spiraled up and slightly back from just past his hairline. Fangs grew in his mouth, black claws took over his hands, and his feet wobbled as he grew several inches from his new raptor height, thankful he had been barefoot.
And then the wings, as large as Sasha’s, shot out of his back, ruining his T-shirt. Nathan tried to back up, so startled by the new reflection in the mirror, but the wings he didn’t yet know how to control crashed into cabinets and the side of the shower, knocking several things to the floor.
“Nathan, calm down!” Jim tried again, strong arms grabbing Nathan about the waist to hold him still. “You’ll tear apart the whole bathroom! Now get a grip. You can hold the human glamours. You were doing it a second ago. Just concentrate so you don’t destroy anything else.”
Jim’s tone was firm, not joking even though in some ways this was really fucking funny. Hilarious even. Only itso wasn’tbecause how the hell was Nathan supposed to stay calm?
“That bastard!” Nathan growled—deep and rumbling; an actualgrowl. He couldn’t stop looking at his incubus self in the mirror—hisincubus self—and feeling resentment for it because this was not how it was supposed to happen. “How is this a gift!? How does this change anything!? We’re right back to where wefuckingstarted!”
“Nathan!” Jim hissed, right against the side of Nathan’s face, only more into the crook of his shoulder because Nathan was taller than Jim now. “Stop thrashing around and being an idiot. I don’t know what Puck means by doing this, but one thing you should pull yourheadout of yourasslong enough to realize is that you are not right back to where you were before. You’re the incubus now, Nathan, and Sasha’s human. Now maybe I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t work too well with Sasha’s deal.”
Part of Nathan wanted to keep thrashing, not because he wanted to hurt Jim or wreck anything else, but because his skin felt strangelyaliveand he didn’t know how to make it settle.
