Page 124 of Changeling
Plucking her wallet from her pants to see if she matched with any of the missing persons, Nathan’s heart immediately plummeted to his stomach.
GloriaWilde.
“God damn it. Iain…”
“Nathan…” filtered over a voice from the other side of the room. Nathan wasn’t sure whose it was. The cavern made everything sound strange.
“It was Iain’s mom,” he ground out as he turned back around. “How the hell did she become a Shadow Immortal so…” but he quickly trailed off.
Jim and Sasha were no longer checking over their wounds and catching their breaths. They were holding their heads as if they were in much more pain than they had been in before.
“Hey!” Nathan called, rushing to their sides as it seemed Alex had already. “What’s up? What’s wrong?”
Jim’s pained eyes turned to Nathan first, up on his knees cringing and gripping his hair tightly as if he might pull all of it out. “Iain’s mother…? A Shadow Immortal?”
“They were lured here to make deals?” Sasha cringed as he spoke.
Jim shook his head. “A normal Power Point…couldn’t do this to us. There’s no fae here making deals. It’s just…happening.”
“But if they’re turning into Shadow Immortals without making a deal…” Nathan caught Alex’s eyes, then Jim and Sasha’s. Sasha’s eyes were already flashing red, and as Nathan looked into Jim’s, his brother’s began to turn amber. “This place isn’t luring humans. If it was that, we’d be the ones affected,” he gestured to Alex. “It’s luringfae. Anyone with enough fae blood. If this is a Power Point, there could have been countless fae here once. The town’s probably full of descendants, maybe even…changelings.”
He thought of Iain, that Iain’s mother had been affected too, which meant fae blood ran strongly in his family, at least in his mother if not also in him.
“But we’re both from carrier families,” Alex said. “Shouldn’t it still affect us?”
“It must be stronger in the people of this town, maybe more recently down their bloodlines than ours. But you two can’t become Shadow Immortals,” Nathan said as he looked at Sasha and Jim, still in pain with their eyes flashing. “So what’s it doing to you…?”
There weren’t any other bodies. The other missing people had probably crossed into the Veil already. The cave had triggered their fae blood, lured them away, and changed them. But how?
“No…no, no…” Sasha started to chant. “Jim,” he said, reaching out for Jim and clutching at his arm after a desperate lunge. “You felt it too…didn’t you? What happened to her? You felt it!” His red eyes shimmered fearfully.
Jim shook as Alex held onto him. He pushed her away and shook his head. “There wasn’t anything…human. No human blood left at all. This place amplified her dark fae blood…and burned the rest away…”
Sasha roared at the ceiling causing Nathan to flinch. The redhead’s fangs glistened in the light from the hardhats, his own hat still off to the side on the ground with Jim’s. He back-peddled towards the nearest wall, his now blackened fingers—not quite claws—scrapping against the stone. His eyes darted out at them like he was afraid to stay too close.
A moment later Jim did the same, pushing back against an opposing wall. Neither of them was clutching their heads anymore but their eyes glowed, and Sasha began to morph more and more into his incubus self again.
Even if what Jim had said was true, that this place was some horrible dark fae incubator, it couldn’t do the same to Jim and Sasha, could it? It couldn’t really burn their humanity away…
“No!” Jim screamed when Alex moved to go near him. “St-stay away from me. I…I don’t want to hurt you. God, I…I can’t stop it, you have to stay away.”
“Stay away,please…” Sasha said mournfully to Nathan when he tried to move toward him. “Please, you have…you have to get away from us.”
“Go!” Jim yelled. “Find another way out. I…I can’t…I can’tstop.” He keeled over onto his side like he was fighting every inch of his body. Sasha crumbled as well, his wings sproutingonce more from his back as he left angry white marks in the stone from his claws.
“Go!”
“Run!”
Nathan felt frozen in place. He had trapped them by firing the shotgun. It was his fault. What did it matter if Iain’s mother was already a mindless slave, he had still shot her. And now Jim and Sasha were…were what?
“Nathan!”
There wasn’t time to think. There wasn’t time to mourn. Alex was standing at a loss, frantic as she looked between the two men that were changing and howling in agony, just as Nathan was looking between them too, wanting to help; knowing he couldn’t. He did the only thing possible. He listened. He grabbed Alex by her wrist, pulled her after him against any protest or resistance towards the nearest open corridor, and ran.
Chapter 48
Ifithadn’tbeenfor the lights that were thankfully working again on his and Alex’s hardhats, Nathan wouldn’t have been able to see anything. It didn’t matter anyway; he had no idea where he was going. The passageway he had chosen was wider than the initial one they had come through, curving as it took them deeper into the mine. Nathan might have been leading them away from any chance of escape, but there hadn’t been time to think logically about possible routes; they had to get away from Jim and Sasha.
