Page 5 of Incubus
He didn't understand what was happening. The past few days had been a blur, starting with finding his father grappling with a stranger in the living room. Nathan had wanted to help, but his mother had pulled him and Jim away, and they had run. They had driven for hours that night looking for the nearest Veil doorway. Nathan and Jim had both been in the backseat, neither able to say anything to their silent mother, whose hands never once stopped clenching the steering wheel. When they finally stopped at a small, unassuming motel, Nathan hadn't been ableto sleep. The last thing they had heard when they drove away from their home was a gunshot.
Now, days later, that same confusion and fear gripped Nathan again.
"Take this," their mother said, pressing something small and cool into the palm of Nathan’s hand. He was shocked to see his father's wedding ring, a simple band of white gold carved with Celtic knots. "I was having it cleaned for him," she said, offering Nathan and Jim a sad smile. "Take care of it for me. Take care of each other." The closet door shut before Nathan could think of anything to say.
Moments later, the same stranger who had invaded their home broke down the door to their motel room and rushed in after their mother. He demanded to know where Jim was, referring to him as ‘the changeling’ in a disgusted spat of words. That alone had Nathan and Jim holding each other closer. Just because Jim was a changeling didn't mean he was anything bad. Nathan knew that. Their parents had said so.
He could only see a sliver of what was happening to their mother through a crack in the closet door. She called the stranger by name—Gabriel—but Nathan didn't understand how she could possibly know him. The man just kept yelling at her about Jim, saying he would leave her and Nathan alone if only she gave up ‘the changeling’, but she refused to say anything.
Nathan watched, unable to move or help, as the man pulled a knife...and slid it into his mother's chest. He held all the more tightly to his brother's hand, clasping their fingers together, and whispered, "Don't let go, Jim. It's going to be okay."
Nathan and Jim burst from the closet, rushing for the open door. The stranger, Gabriel, called after them, but their mother yelled with what voice she had left for them to go, just run, and they obeyed. They ran so fast and so far that when Nathan's legs finally gave out on him, he had no idea where they were. Theyhadn’t let go of each other's hands once, and when they stopped, Jim turned to bury his face in Nathan's shoulder.
"It's going to be okay, Jim. It's going to be okay," Nathan said, practically chanting. They were in some dark back alley, hardly a safe place to rest, but they needed to stop. Nathan pulled his brother out in front of him. "It's okay. I'm still here, Jim. I’m still here. We can take care of each other, like Mom said. I'm not going to let anything happen to you." He wiped at his brother’s constant tears, hoping that Jim would open his eyes and look at him.
Then Jim did.
"Liar," he said, and the sight of slit pupils shook Nathan to his core.
Nathangaspedasheawoke. Something had him pinned to the bed and the air was being crushed from his chest. Panicked, he looked down at his body, but breathed relief when he saw it was only Jim. His brother was curled around him like they were twelve years old again.
Nathan reached up to rub at his eyes, frustrated when he found dampness. The man he knew only as ‘Gabriel’ often chased him in his dreams, but he hadn't dreamed of that particular night in years, playing out events exactly as they had happened in life. Except for the ending. Jim had never had eyes like a dark fae. Other than on the beach the day before. But Nathan was certain that the flash of slit pupils he had seen when his brother first returned to him had only been a trick of the light.
Pushing Jim onto his own side of the bed, Nathan took in a few deeper breaths. They were way too old to share a single.
The dream had Nathan recounting everything he had done to cover his tracks the past few weeks. He had been more careless than usual, distracted with finding Jim, but he was certain he had left no obvious clues for Gabriel to follow. Of course, that was what they thought every time, right before Gabriel came close to catching them. His persistence in chasing them after what had been half of Nathan and Jim’s lives was what kept him in their nightmares.
Jim hadn’t stirred, and it was too early to wake him, but Nathan had no intention of going back to sleep. He slipped out of bed and padded into the bathroom. As soon as he closed the door and flicked on the light, he jumped at the sight of a plainly dressed, blonde-haired man sitting on the edge of the bathtub.
Chapter 3
“Jesus,Walter,”Nathanspokequietly so as not to wake his brother, “I told you not to do that anymore."
Walter remained stern from his seat on the bathtub. He had not been able to follow Nathan to Wales. Spirit Guides couldn’t enter the Veil or appear before sidhe. Most humans never even knew they had a Spirit Guide, and if they did, and were knowledgeable about the Veil and the supernatural world, few had the ability to communicate with them.
Nathan hadn’t been able to see or speak with Walter until the day his mother died.
“What were you thinking, Nathan?” Walter said, his voice low like a disapproving parent. “There is nothing in your path that says you are meant to die this way, on some foolish crusade to save your brother.”
“And here I thought you might be here to comfort me after a nightmare,” Nathan grumbled.
“Jim is what he is, Nathan. Putting yourself in harm's way won’t change that.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Nathan countered. “All I wanted was to bring him back. They don’t get to claim him just because of what he is. So he ended up a changeling and I'm not. So what? The fae blood in our family could have triggered in either one of us. I’m supposed to forget that just because he got the short straw? He’s my brother, Walter. I had to do something.”
The grim expression on Walter’s face softened, but not by much. He appeared to Nathan as a young man, though he had been older than Nathan when he died. His blonde hair was short and always mussed, but it was his eyes that gave him away as something not quite human. They were a warm brown but unnaturally vibrant. It was difficult to argue with someone who always looked so intense and unwaveringly certain about their position.
So Nathan hadn’t argued. He hadn’t told Walter anything about his plans to summon the Messenger, despite the prodding looks Walter had given him during the two weeks Jim was gone. Walter could see probable futures ahead of Nathan, but he couldn’t read his mind or predict everything that might happen.
“I don’t have any regrets, so you can save the guilt trip,” Nathan said. He turned to lean forward against the sink, twitching with the need to punch something. All he would do if he punched Walter was scatter the man’s image, which was hardly satisfying.
"Really? No regrets at all?” Walter said patronizingly. “I wish I had been that confident about my decisions in life, but I suppose we can't all be so untouchable."
Nathan curled his fingers around the edges of the sink. Jim was lucky. As far as anyone knew, changelings didn't have Spirit Guides.
Glancing up into the bathroom mirror, Nathan grimaced at his reflection. He looked older somehow, more worn and world-weary. He was handsome enough and fit. An active lifestyle was necessary when he had always needed to be stronger and faster than Gabriel, and whatever creatures might come after him and his brother. But something was different.
“Are you listening to me, Nathan?”
