Page 2 of Incubus
"As you wish."
The land went almost instantly black. Nathan couldn’t move. He couldn’tbreathe.The ambient sounds around him disappeared. It was like floating in deep space, with only the Messenger’s voice echoing surreally around him.
“Your offer is accepted by this court, Nathan Grier. James is returned, andyou…belong to us.”
Nathan tried to speak but no sound came out. He trembled when the Messenger reached for him and yet, somehow, despite the tension in his body and that awful pull of the encroaching Veil coming to claim him, he managed to move. Nathan lifted the knife still in his right hand and struck, plunging the iron blade deep into the Messenger's heart.
She shrieked in agony. All fae were allergic to iron; it was the only way Nathan knew of killing them, but the Messenger did not fall as quickly as he expected. She lashed back and tore into Nathan's chest with her talons. They were real talons now, not merely sharpened fingernails, for the Messenger had shed her beautiful guise and become the beast. The mask was her real face now, an ugly beak with beady slit eyes, and her torn garments spread out around her as leathery wings.
The blackness faded from their surroundings, returning to a buzzing, noisy world where the sun had just risen and the wind was still blowing. The Messenger shuddered, whimpering in the awful voice of her true form, and finally fell at Nathan's feet.
Nathan’s chest burned from where her claws had struck him, and he stumbled back. As he watched the Messenger's form grow still on the ground, a substance thick as tar seeped out from beneath her like blood and covered her body until it consumed her. When she was truly dead, all that remained was Nathan's knife lying amidst a black stain on the grass. The Veil doorway had long since disappeared.
Pain seared through Nathan's chest again, unnaturally, as if something was being freshly branded into his skin. He gasped, stumbling further back at the sudden throbbing until he tripped and felt his feet slip from the edge of the cliff.
Air rushed past Nathan, blinding his vision. There was too much darkness to see clearly, despite the risen sun. He was freefalling with nothing below to catch him.Falling...
Nathan braced himself for death, but impact never came. He was just suddenly on the ground, coughing up at the sky as if he had landed hard enough to wind him but nothing more. He should not have been able to survive such a long drop, and yet he had landed safely on the beach, far beneath the cliff he had been standing on a moment ago.
Reaching a hand to his chest, Nathan felt where the Messenger had dug in her claws. There was a tear in his shirt, and on his skin just above his heart were the grooves of an already healed-over scar. She had marked him for trying to back out of their deal. All dark fae would be after him now to claim the bounty for his betrayal and for killing one of their sidhe. And if no one claimed him before the mark ran its course…
He had to find Jim.
Nathan's entire body ached in protest when he started to move. He wondered if the fall had killed him after all and he was just in shock, but even as that thought flickered through his mind, the pain began to lessen and he was able to sit up.
He didn’t trust his eyes when he first saw the figure sprawled face down along the shore beside him as if it had washed in with the tide.
“Jim…?”
A groan responded, the body already moving, pushing up on trembling arms and taking in gulps of air like coming up from deep water.
There was no question, no doubt at all. It was Jim, looking just as he had the last time Nathan had seen him, even in the same T-shirt and jeans. His hair was black like Nathan's but longer and unkempt, and he seemed so much larger than Nathan despite their nearly identical height.
Nathan didn’t care how it was possible for Jim to look so much the same when the Messenger had said she wouldn’t be able to return him as he was. All that mattered was that Jim was back. Jim was right there in front of him.
Moving as quickly as his sore muscles would allow, Nathan scrambled toward his brother, seeking some final confirmation. He wanted Jim to look up, look him in the eyes and smile so impossibly wide like he used to.
It took a moment, took Nathan reaching out and grasping Jim’s shoulder, but finally Jim caught his breath and tilted his head up to meet Nathan’s gaze.
Slit pupils blinked wearily.
Nathan jerked back, though he did not release the grip he had on his brother’s shoulder. He couldn’t. He stared into his brother's dark blue eyes. But as he looked more carefully, he saw that they were not slit. They looked normal.
“N-Nate…? Wh-what…what’s going on?” Jim shook as he spoke, almost as if he really had washed ashore and was soaked to the bone. He squinted at their surroundings. “Porthclais?Wales? How did we get here? Wasn’t I…out getting pizza?” He looked back at Nathan, completely lost.
The Messenger may not have been able to wipe Jim’s memory, but she had kept her word and clouded his mind for now. Nathan was grateful, even though he didn’t know how long that brief reprieve would last.
“I’ll tell you everything,” Nathan said, smacking his brother’s shoulder and giving it a good squeeze. “But first let’s get ourselves somewhere a little warmer, huh? The doorway, remember, is all the way upthere.” He pointed up the cliff face.
Jim groaned. “Then why the hell are we down here?”
A broader smile tugged at Nathan’s lips. “Quit complaining, you big girl,” he said, and stood to help Jim up as well.
As pained and wobbly on their feet as both brothers were, Nathan led them back to the top of the cliff to summon the doorway and leave Wales behind. Explanations would come later.
Chapter 2
"Youdidwhat?"Jimexclaimed, anger and disappointment hardening his otherwise boyish features.
