Page 134 of Changeling
“You can’t besidhe.” Nathan shook his head, re-aiming the gun on Sasha’s body as best he could from his slumped position on the floor. “Jim banished the last of you bastards, and I only ever saw one sidhe possess someone else before, and he was human. That’s not Sasha’s body. It can’t be.”
“Actually…it can.” Still smug and collected, the imposter moved toward Nathan. “Not that it was easy. See, I’ve been lying low in Sasha here for some time now. It couldn’t have been more perfect if I had planned it. All I wanted was to hide out for a while. I figured I’d escape the next time you went through the Veil, never imagined I could actually take over, not another fae like an incubus. But then there was that barn full of sidhe and a surge of raw power. Then the cave. Between those two events, I had everything I needed to take over once he was left all alone and exhausted with your brother. You’d be surprised how easy it was to make a strong enough sedative to sway Jim just with what you idiots carry around.”
Nathan’s response dripped out of him slowly as the full horror of what this meant struck him. “You’ve…been hiding inside of Sasha for weeks?”
“The thanks all goes to you for the final push, Nathan. Leaving Sasha all alone tonight was all the opportunity I needed, the way he was still so shaky. So afraid. Vulnerable.”
“Shut up.” Nathan had started to drop the gun from exhaustion and the pained realization that this really was a sidhe wearing his lover’s body, but now he steadied the gun again.
“Now, Nathan. Aren’t we past this? We both know you’re not going to shoot.”
“Fuck you,” Nathan ground out, clutching his brother’s limp body against him.
The sidhe crouched in front of Nathan. “Oh, don’t you remember? We’ve already done that. I’m looking forward to being more than just a spectator.”
Nathan couldn’t think. As fire surged through him, he pressed his hands to the sidhe’s chest—Sasha’schest—and pushed with all the momentum of his fury behind him. He was on his feet, a mad rush into a body he usually cherished, leaving Jim and the gun behind until he had slammed the sidhe into the wall beside the bathroom—the awful déjà vu leaving him numb.
“Get out! Get out of him right now, you fucking bastard!”
That same laughter was Nathan’s reply, too cruel to bear because it was Sasha’s voice almost like it normally sounded, as if the incubus himself were laughing in Nathan’s face. “And I thought it was fun ridingLeven. But this…this is even better.”
Nathan didn’t understand at first, but when he looked into what should have been Sasha’s eyes, blue and beautiful, he saw something dark and familiar. “You…? The spriggan…”
“Not as dumb as you look, huh?” The grin on Sasha’s face widened. His eyes flicked shut for a moment, like the shutter on a camera, and when they opened again they were nearly all-over black. But it was as if there were cracks in the black trying so desperately to be Sasha’s red, making his eyes look like the burnt embers of molten rock. “I’m Sasha now, fully in control, morethan I ever was with that foolish boy…all thanks to you, Nathan. And now I wannaplay.”
Like a burst of air from within Nathan’s chest, a great whoosh shot him across the room. He struck the opposing wall hard enough that he was entirely winded when he crumbled to the floor.
“Come on, Nate. Don’t you want to play with me? All this power the incubus has given me lately…we could have so much fun.”
Nathan looked up, pain blossoming at the back of his head and throbbing throughout his shoulders after impact. Sasha’s tall, lean body was stalking towards him with that awful grin and sure strides. “I’m going to kill you, you asshole,” Nathan promised.
“Not without killing Sasha you won’t.”
Sasha’s body reached Nathan finally and a hand grabbed him too easily by the scruff of his shirt, lifting him from the floor and slamming him back into the wall he had only moments before been thrown into. He ached, and Sasha’s body with the spriggan’s amplified power was so damn strong. Nathan was shaking but not at all from fear. He wanted to rip the spriggan out of Sasha’s body with his bare hands for even daring to do this to them.
“Oh…Nathan.” The spriggan pressed in close so that Nathan’s arms were pinned at his sides and all he could so was struggle to breathe. Nathan knew what the sidhe was trying to do, the way he moved Sasha’s hips in line with his own, brought Sasha’s lips to his ear, and breathed hotly on his skin. “Between the barn, the cave, and being inside this perfect host, poor Jim didn’t even catch a whiff of me.”
Jim.
Like a fool Nathan had almost forgotten his brother, lying mostly unconscious on the floor while Nathan fell sway to all thefurious anger boiling within him. He knew his eyes must have betrayed his sudden panic for his brother’s sake because the spriggan laughed again, pressing Sasha’s body into his so tightly that his breath hitched.
“What do you want from us?” Nathan bit out.
“What do I want?” the spriggan echoed mockingly. “The same thing I wanted from Leven—a body. But that doesn’t matter right now, Nathan. No, right now what matters is what I’m going todo.” He jerked Sasha’s hips forward, and with Nathan lifted slightly the angle was just right for him to feel how Sasha’s body was still half-hard from fooling around with Jim.
A whimper fell from Sasha’s lips as the spriggan made the same motion again, just the way Nathan loved to hear it. It made him sick. It made him so angry. It made him feel like he might start crying and wouldn’t be able to stop. Then Sasha’s tongue flicked out to lick at Nathan’s lips.
“Right now, Nathan, I’m an incubus. I’m Sasha. And I am going tofuckyou to death with his body. But first…I’m going to make you watch while I do it to your brother.”
Every inch of Nathan went rigid, an unseen force pressing him firmly to the wall and holding him in place. He wanted to lunge for the spriggan even if he was wearing Sasha’s skin, but he couldn’t move, only just barely his head and neck as he strained against the invisible hold on him in place of Sasha’s hands.
“I was going to have you find him dead, really draw it out,” the spriggan smirked. Jim’s body was just behind him, unmoving save uneven breaths making his chest rise and fall slowly. “But this is so much more fun, don’t you think?”
Horror raced through Nathan’s mind. He couldn’t form coherent words, managing only a weak growl.
“Dissention?” the spriggan said with a sarcastic snort, even as he was turning to look down at Jim, prone and vulnerable below him.
Nathan had to think. He had tothink. “Just…a friendly warning,” he said, struggling to find an even voice and not show that he had no real plan. “You know aboutMalak, don’t you?”
