Page 79 of Incubus
"No," Sasha broke in. "Believe me, I meant it that way too." He smiled, his voice quiet despite having to talk over the rain, with both of them so wet that their hair was dripping water into their eyes.
Even in the dark and rain, Sasha's eyes were soblue. It seemed no effort at all to lean toward him.
“Sasha! Nathan!”
As soon as Nathan heard his brother calling, he started to sense a trend. “What’s up?” he called back, pulling away from Sasha and turning at Jim’s approach.
Jim was panting heavily, having sprinted from the other side of the hill. “No master, but…I think the golem is on the move."
Chapter 30
NathanandSashascrambledto their feet. They joined Jim in surrounding the entrance into the makeshift cave, listening for signs of movement. There was no sound at first, but Jim’s eyes remained wide, growing wider as time passed, like a meter to measure how close the golem was at any given moment.
While they waited anxiously for the golem to reach them, each of them pulled a shotgun from the supply bag and took it in hand. When Jim readied his gun to fire, Nathan knew the beast would soon be upon them.
There wasn’t anything inherently frightening about active golems. Nathan wasn’tafraidof golems, including this creature they were about to face that he could hear like a galloping bear. It was when a golem was still and silent that Nathan was disturbed, knowing that at any moment the thing might move. It was like being around a dead body with the threat of it getting up and suddenly attacking.
Crouched around the entrance into the cave, Nathan was ready the moment a large figure burst from the darkness into the rain. But it was too fast. Three shots fired in unison and hit nothing but air.
“It's already on someone’s scent!” Sasha cried out, leaping up to give chase after the large blur that had moved past them. “We have to get its attention!”
Nathan was amazed by how fast Sasha moved through the rain, disappearing into the trees in moments. Jim moved just as inhumanly, suddenly gone, flying into the woods using a slightly different path to cut the golem off. Nathan took Jim’s cue and raced into the trees further down. The golem moved fast, but maybe by taking different routes they would be able to surround it.
Minutes passed with nothing but brush in Nathan’s line of sight as he ran. Water was running down the back of his neck. He hated the rain at the best of times, but he really hated being in soaking wet clothing in the middle of the woods at night.
The ground was already saturated. That meant that, even under the canopy of trees, everything was relatively slippery. In lower lying and completely exposed areas, the mud was almost ankle deep. The rain had picked up over the last hour. Nathan was still cold and wet, but he could appreciate—just a little—that it could be far worse if the temperature was any lower.
He stumbled over a root, nearly falling, as his cell phone blared from inside his pocket. Cursing, Nathan fumbled to answer the call.
"What?"
"Do you have anything?" Jim called from the other end of the line. Even his voice sounded soggy.
"No. Maybe more of a freaking cold. You?"
"Nothing."
"Did you try Sasha?"
"He hasn't got anything either," Jim said. “I think we lost it.”
"Wait..." Nathan lowered his voice, thinking he had heard something to his left. "I might have somethingnow."
He strained to hear over the rain. There was definitely something moving through the brush near him. And fairly quickly too.
"I got something, Jim. No visual though, so it could be anything. I'm on it."
"Where are you?" Jim's voice asked urgently.
"I'm heading north. Call Sasha!" And with that Nathan snapped his phone shut, sprinting off after what he sincerely hoped was the golem.
Sprinting was actually not the best way to describe Nathan's slogging and slipping through the mud, trying to avoid trees, rocks, and other nameless bits of nature which he did his best to baptize with expletives. It wasn't long before his breath was coming in harsh pants. He was fit, but he was carrying a good extra ten pounds of rain water soaked into his clothing and felt like he was running through quicksand.
Nathan was thankful when the pursuit brought him into a more heavily wooded, slightly elevated area. The going was a lot easier, but he still had to stop running to get a lead on the sounds of the golem over his own harsh breathing, the slap of wet clothing against his body, and the sucking noise of his feet in the mud.
He wasn't even really sure if he was gaining on the thing. It seemed to be moving on a course parallel to his. At least they soon started heading downhill, but that also meant that Nathan started to pick up speed.
Bursting out of the trees into a clearing, Nathan was moving faster than he could control. He saw two things very clearly. First, Sasha had just run into the clearing from the opposite side and was standing with his phone at his ear. For the life of him,Nathan couldn't understand why Sasha was staring transfixed atthatpart of the trees. Sasha was also breathing heavily, and combined with the cell phone might explain why he couldn’t hear Nathan yelling at him in warning.
