Nikulas was not looking forward to this conversation. Not one fucking bit.

He and Aiden were supposed to be out searching for pods of demon-possessed vampires running amok. But instead, they were back in Seattle, gearing up to tell Luukas that one of his Hunters was consorting with his biggest enemy behind his back.

At least he assumed it was behind his back. No, no. There was no fucking way Luukas had given Shea his blessing to go hang out with that fucking warlock. Not after what that son of a bitch had done to him.

“Stop it, mate. Your face gets all wonky when you do that. I can practically see the smoke coming out of your ears. You’re going to burn out the few brain cells you have left.”

Nik looked at his best friend in disbelief. “How can you fucking joke around at a time like this?”

“Who’s joking?” Aiden said, then knocked on Luukas’s apartment door.

Rolling his eyes, Nik listened for his brother or Keira to come to the door. But the footsteps that sounded were neither of them, but rather Emma’s, his mate. And they sounded…off. Something was wrong. Pushing Aiden out of the way, he kicked the door in, busting the lock and crumbling the door jam.

Emma slid to a stop just out of the way of the door, putting her hands on her hips and scowling at the two males as they burst into the apartment. “Really, Nik. You’ve gotta stop destroying your brother’s doors.”

But even though she was scolding him with a hint of amusement, he could see the strain around her eyes. He reached her in two long strides. Scooping her up into his arms, he held her tight against his chest, and breathed a sigh of relief when she wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’ve missed you, sweetheart.”

“I’ve missed you, too, blood sucker.”

He laughed at her reference to when they’d first met, but immediately got serious again. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

“And where is Grace?” Aiden squeezed past them until he could see the entire apartment. He lifted his chin and smelled the air. “She’s not here. Where is she?”

Emma tried to pull away, and Nik released her with more than a little reluctance. “Grace is fine. She went to your place to feed Mojo.”

Turning on his heel and telling them, “I’ll be back,” Aiden stepped over the broken door and headed to the stairs, bypassing the elevator.

Once he was gone, Nik turned back to the love of his life. Taking her small face in his hands, he pressed a kiss to the freckles on her nose. “Now, please tell me what’s going on, Em, before I imagine the worst and lose my fucking mind.”

She gave him a sad smile. “It’s Luukas.”

His breath froze in his lungs. “What’s happened?”

Emma shook her head, her eyes filling with worried tears. “We’re not really sure. But something’s wrong with him. He’s been getting weaker and weaker since you’ve been gone. Keira has given him as much blood as she dares, sometimes forcing it upon him, and making sure he gets enough rest, but nothing is helping. It’s like he’s”—she gave a little shrug—“fading away.”

Nik pressed the heels of his hands over his eyes. “It’s the fucking demons.”

“The demons?”

He dropped his arms back down to his sides. “Well, not the demons, but the bodies they’re possessing. The bodies are rotting, slowly.”

Comprehension lit her hazel eyes. “And they’re the bodies of vampires that Luuk created. Oh, my God.” She stared up at Nik in horror. “He’s weakening because his creations are dying.”

“Yeah.” Nik turned away, fists clenched at his sides. “Losing one or two here and there he can take. It would only set him back a day or so. Losing fifty at once—” He couldn’t imagine any kind of life without his overbearing older brother. “Fuck.”

“What do we do?” Emma wrapped her arms around her middle. “Nik? What do we do?”

Wandering over to the window, Nikulas stared out at the lights of downtown Seattle. But he wasn’t really seeing the beauty of the city that had been their home for many years now. His jaw ached, and he realized he was grinding his teeth. He knew what they needed to do. If they didn’t stop those motherfuckers, he was going to lose his brother…and his best friend. Aiden was old and strong, and perhaps his body was lasting longer because his demon preferred to stay dormant, but soon, even he would be a walking, rotting corpse. “We have to send them back to hell. And we need to do it five fucking minutes ago. We’re running out of time.”

He felt Emma’s hand on his back, and her touch gave him strength, as it always did. Reaching back, he caught her hand in his and pulled it around to kiss the pulse on her inner wrist, breathing in the sweet scent of her.

“Go see your brother,” she told him. Then her forehead wrinkled up in that adorable way it did. “Wait. Why are you even here? I thought you and Aiden were going to be gone another three days, at least.”

Shit. He’d nearly forgotten. “Shea is hanging out with that bastard warlock. We came home to tell Luukas.” It took him a minute to notice that his female wasn’t showing the sufficient amount of surprise he would expect from such a pronouncement. Suddenly, she had his full attention. “Emma? Do you know something that I don’t?”

“No. Well, not really. Just that that explains why we saw Shea ducking down into the passenger seat of an SUV the other day. Grace and I didn’t recognize the guy who was driving.”

“And you didn’t bother to tell anyone?”

She gave that little shrug again. “We just figured she didn’t want us giving her the third degree when she got home.”

He stared at the woman he loved more than anything in this world or the next, and wondered if he’d ever understand the female mind.

“Nikulas? What are you doing here? Did you find something?”

Nik’s eyes locked with Emma’s before he turned to find his brother leaning against the doorjamb of his bedroom. He looked tired and thin, but his grey eyes were still as sharp as ever. And as they spotted the damage to the front door, Nik almost wished they weren’t.

“What the fuck is it with you and my doors?”

Nik ran a hand through his blond hair. “Yeah, sorry about that.” He didn’t bother telling his brother that he’d done it because he knew something was wrong. It wouldn’t make anyone feel better to point out the obvious. “I’ll have it fixed first thing.”

“You’d better.” Luukas made his way over to one of the overstuffed chairs and sat down. “Now tell me what’s going on. Why are you back? And where’s Aiden?”

“I’ll just go hang out with Keira,” Emma told him, rising on her tiptoes to give him a quick kiss on his jaw. “Come get me when you’re done.”

He promised her he would, and then he joined his brother, taking the chair on the opposite side of the coffee table. Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on his thighs and laced his fingers together. How to tell Luuk what was going on….

“Shea is with that fucking warlock.” There. That was subtle.

The temperature in the room suddenly dropped at least fifteen degrees, yet Luukas’s expression didn’t change one iota. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I heard you correctly. Would you please repeat that?”

“You heard correctly,” Nik assured him. “Aiden and I just saw them at the airport in Vancouver, getting onto a private jet.”

Luukas sat back in his chair. Other than the white-knuckled grip he had on the armrests, no one would be able to tell how upset he was if they didn’t know him. But Nik knew him almost as well as he knew himself, and he knew his brother was hanging on by a thread. “He found her somehow, and is forcing her to go with him.”

Nik was shaking his head before Luuk finished the sentence. “No, Luuk. She was there of her own free will.”

“But how can you be sure of this?”

“Because we spoke to her. I tried to get her to come with us, and she wouldn’t. We watched her get onto the plane without any coercion.”

Luuk burst up from his chair with a show of speed that was surprising, considering his appearance. He started pacing back and forth in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, moving so fast a human wouldn’t be able to track him. “He must be blackmailing her. Forcing her to go with him. Shea would not betray me so readily.”

“I don’t think so, bro.”

“But you don’t know for certain.”

“No, but I know what I saw. And I’m telling you she was not being forced onto that plane. No one can force Shea to do anything she doesn’t want to do, not without going to extreme lengths.”

“But you don’t know that for certain,” Luukas insisted.

“No, but—”

“You don’t know,” he emphasized.

Nikulas took a deep breath and gave in. “No. I don’t know for sure.”

Luukas stopped pacing. With his back to the room, he stared out the window much as Nik had done just moments before. “I’m not going to condemn her without proof.”

“I understand.” Nik rose to go. “I just wanted to let you know what was going on.”

“Thank you,” his brother told him.

But Nik could already tell he was losing him. Fuck. Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything, and just handled it himself. He thought Luukas was getting better after the years of hell he’d been through, but maybe this reminder was too much for him.

“I’m gonna get Em and go.”

There was no response.

He’d better get Keira out here. She was the only one who could pull Luukas from the depths of his own hell once the terrors engulfed him.