Shea stared at the door, waiting for her heart to start beating again. “What just happened?” She looked back at the vampire who was again lounging on her bed. “Aiden? What the hell just happened?” Running out into the hall, she ran to the stairs, even though she’d seen Jesse disappear into thin air with her own eyes. Aiden appeared behind her with her bag in hand. Shea swatted at it. “Put that down! I’m not going anywhere without Jesse.” Leaning over the railing, she stared down the center of the stairwell and listened. The only thing she heard was a couple of young girls giggling a few floors down.

“Okay,” she said to no one in particular. Shea forced herself to calm. She’d had his blood. And he’d had hers. She could track him if he wasn’t too far away. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and listened—not with her ears, but with her blood. She listened for the tiniest familiarity, the smallest pull.

There was nothing. Absolutely nothing. “Where the hell did he go?”

“Look, poppet. Why don’t you just come back with me? The warlock said he would come to you when you needed to feed. He’ll pop up when you least expect it, and then you two can hash things out if you still wish it. Right now, Luukas needs you back home.”

She swung toward Aiden, unreasonably angry. None of this would have happened if he hadn’t shown up there at that exact moment. “If he wants me back so badly, why doesn’t he just call me back? His blood to mine. I would have to obey him.”

“He wants you back, Shea. But he also wants it to be your choice. You’re no good to him if you harbor a grudge.”

Shea backed off. She could see Luukas doing that. He was an intimidating leader at times, but he was smart, and he was fair. “What about you and Nik? Do you want me back home?”

Aiden’s mouth thinned, and he glanced away. But after a moment, he heaved a great sigh and turned back to her. “Of course, we do.”

With a sound of disbelief, she shoved past him. The space was small, and her shoulder slammed into his chest as she passed. Pain shot up and down her arm, curling her hand into something resembling one of Cruthú’s claws. Shea jumped away with a hiss of agony. “Dammit!” The curse wasn’t gone.

The implications of that fact didn’t escape her. However, it only solidified her decision to be with Jesse.

“Sorry, poppet. But you need to warn a bloke before you up and switch directions like that.” Aiden stuck to her like glue as she picked up her bag, careful to keep an eye on him this time, and marched back to the hotel room. “What are you doing? The exit is this way.”

“I told you I’m not coming with you. I’m staying here.” Dropping her bag on the floor, she sat down at the end of the bed so she faced the door, and prepared to wait as long as it took. She would wait there forever, if need be. “I’m not leaving, Aiden. So, though I appreciate what you’re doing here, you can go ahead and go without me. Find Nik and go home. I’m sure Luukas will survive without me until I can straighten all this out.”

He sat down beside her, but not too close. “Truly, then? You want to stay here and keep pissing around with him?”

Shea glared at him out of the corner of her eye. “Aiden…” she warned.

He leaned back against the headboard and swung his legs up onto the bed. “Before you make a decision you’ll regret, don’t you want to hear our plan?”

No. She didn’t want to hear their plan. She didn’t want to hear anything except the sound of Jesse’s boots coming down the hall. “No. I really don’t.”

“But it’s a good plan. I came up with it with a little help from my friend here.” He waved his hand over his gut. “He pops his head up every now and again just to order me about. It’s worse than living with my mum, and scares the knickers off Grace. I don’t know why she stays with me. I truly don’t.” He perked up again. “Oh! But the plan. I was about to tell you.”

Shea jumped up from the bed and began to pace. “Aiden! Please, just go.” She couldn’t take anymore of his blathering. She had other things to worry about. Like how she was going to fix what was going on with her and Jesse, and how she was going to talk him out of his foolish plan. There had to be another way to dethrone his father and take back control of the coven.

And how the hell she was going to find him so she could do all of that.

And as for the demons, they needed to be sent back to where they came from. But to do so would take the magic of the entire Moss coven, including Jesse, who would never agree to it. And if he wouldn’t help them, the girls would take on the spell on their own—she didn’t need Aiden to tell her that—whether they were ready or not. And Shea knew that as powerful as they would be someday, none of them were ready for something like this except for Keira. She was the only one who had been taught since childhood to control her magic.

Of course, there was one other way that she knew of to send the demons back to where they came from, without risking the lives of her friends. The only risk would be to herself.

Dammit.

“Shea? Do you want to hear the plan or not?”

She stopped pacing. She’d nearly forgotten Aiden was there. “I told you, no.”

“Well, I’m telling you anyway.” He grinned, and Shea felt sorry for women everywhere should they ever lay eyes on that stunning face. Especially Grace. She didn’t stand a chance as his mate. “While you’ve been gallivanting about, Luukas has been following the demons. Well, not Luukas himself, of course, but some of the Council and others in the colony who volunteered to help. They are beginning to converge in groups, and it looks like they’re getting ready to travel. And—” He paused for dramatic effect. “Guess where they’re heading?”

Exasperated, but knowing she’d be allowed no peace until he finished, she asked, “Where?”

“Right back to us. Well, not to us. But to Canada. Which is near us—”

“Aiden!”

“Right. So, we can only assume that they need to be near the altar to do their hokey pokey and become themselves again.” He rubbed his temple with his fingers. “Although why they would want to give up the bodies they have is beyond me. Why be demons when you could be vampires? It’s rather bewildering. Of course, as old as they are, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find they were all a bit off their trolley. And there is the matter of the rot.”

Shea didn’t have the patience for this today. She opened her mouth to tell him so when there was another knock at the door. Aiden leapt from the bed, and both vampires went completely still as they stared at the closed door.

“It’s the demon.” Shea stated the obvious, as the stench of the thing foretold what they would find when they opened the door. “The one that took over Steven’s body. He was here earlier, talking to Jesse.”

Aiden bared his fangs, a low growl rising from his chest. “My demon doesn’t play well with others, Shea. We need to go, before he decides to make an appearance.”

She walked to the door, glancing back over her shoulder. “Go if you need to. I’m answering the door. He might know something.” Though her every nerve ending was on fire to be this close to it, she whipped open the door and stood defiantly in its way. “What do you want?”

The thing raised its head, and Shea clamped her teeth together to hide her reaction. Under the oversized hood of its coat, gray skin barely clung to the muscle and bone beneath it. One eye was gone, and there was a hole in its cheek, showing a jawbone and a set of broken teeth. The pallid lips pulled up into some semblance of a smile. “Ms. Bennett,” it drawled.

It knew her name. Shea’s own skin felt like spiders were crawling all over her. But she knew better than to play its game. “What do you want?” she repeated, somehow managing to keep her tone bland.

“It’s been a long time,” it said. “How is your father?”

Icy fear stiffened her muscles and froze the blood in her veins. Shea found she couldn’t move even if she wanted to. She stared at the thing in front of her in horror.

“Real shame, what happened to Elise.” Its one good eye watched her closely, daring her to react.

The ice turned to fire as she realized why this thing had seemed so familiar to her. Rage filled her, consuming her so completely that she lunged for the thing before thinking it through. Her fingers curled into claws and swiped at its face as her fangs snapped an inch from its throat.

She was blocked by Aiden before she could make contact. Moving at vamp speed, he suddenly appeared between her the disgusting creature in front of her. Shea hissed in pain when they collided, her reflexes forcing her to jump back.

As the thing laughed at her over Aiden’s shoulder, she bared her fangs and growled.

“Be careful, Shea,” Aiden told her.

His voice sounded muffled. Shea watched as his bright gray eyes became muddled with shadows, and realized that he wasn’t warning her to watch herself with the demon at the door, but the demon inside of him.

His mouth twisted into a grimace that was nothing like the Aiden she knew, and he turned around and put his back to her. “Get the fuck away from here, Mammot,” Aiden told it. His British accent was gone. Even the way he held himself was different.

Though she’d been expecting it, the sound of its voice still surprised her. That wasn’t Aiden speaking. It was the thing inside of him.

Instead of leaving as it was told, Mammot leaned forward. “Or you will do what, Waano? You have no power here.”

“Do we really need to go through this again?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Leave, Mammot,” the thing inside Aiden repeated. “Now.”

Shea watched the transaction between the two with growing trepidation, despite the rage that still simmered in her blood. As a vampire, she was strong. And she could do a few mind tricks. But she was nothing compared to the ancient creatures facing off before her. If she got caught alone in a fight between them, she’d never survive it.

Shea mentally kicked herself in the ass. Her worry over Jesse had gotten the better of her. She hadn’t thought before she opened the door, she’d just reacted. Not that a locked door would’ve stopped the thing from coming in. But she should’ve listened to Aiden. They should’ve escaped out the emergency exit. Crawled out the window. Anything except confront it.

The demon, Mammot, lifted its chin. “I have something for the warlock.”

She spoke over Aiden’s shoulder. “He’s not here, you sick son of a bitch.”

“Tsk. Tsk. Still holding a grudge, I see.” It shook its head, its voice dripping with remorse that she didn’t buy for one second. “You know, it didn’t have to end the way it did, Shea.”

She bared her fangs at it. “You killed my sister.”

It held up one finger, a bloody bed where the nail should’ve been. “Ah! Ah! No. That’s not exactly true now, is it?” Its one good eye stared straight through her. She felt it, crawling around in her head like maggots. “You killed your sister, Shea. Not me. For all you know, I was only borrowing her temporarily, and would’ve been on to another body long before the wedding. Although then I would’ve missed fucking that hot piece of meat she’d chosen to marry.” He turned to Aiden. “I really like the way things are these days; much better than before. People don’t wait for marriage to fuck anymore.”

Rage and disgust shook Shea uncontrollably.

“Oh! I almost forgot.” The thing in the hall stepped to the side and picked up a large briefcase from the floor. “The blood. I trust you will give this to the warlock when he returns?” Ignoring the low growl coming from Aiden, he held the case out to Shea.

After a moment’s pause, she took it.

“Waano.” It nodded at Aiden, pulled its hood down over its face, and wandered off down the hallway toward the elevator. She watched as it got inside. It waved to them as the doors slid closed.

Shea backed away from Aiden slowly. She had no idea what was going to happen now.

He closed the door and twisted the lock. Turning around, he tilted his head, spearing Shea with his haunted gaze. He didn’t say anything, just ran his eyes up and down her body. Revulsion filled her, and made her want to scrub its gaze from her skin.

Aiden’s eyes closed, and he cried out as his body suddenly bent in half right before he crashed to the floor.

“Aiden? Aiden!” Shea dropped the case and ran over to him, but he was out cold. Shea looked around, but no one else was in the room. There was nothing she could do but wait for him to wake.

She had no idea how long she sat on the rug beside him, watching for the slightest flutter of his eyelids. Minutes, hours, days. But when they finally opened again, the shadows had fled. He rose to his knees, holding his stomach while he gagged. “Ah, bloody hell. I wish he wouldn’t do that.” He retched again. “At the very least, he could give me a little warning.”

Shea reached out to help her friend, but pulled back at the last moment. “Aiden? Are you all right?”

“Shower. I need a shower. And whiskey.” And then he promptly vomited blood all over the carpet.

Shea jumped back out of the way. Running to the bathroom, she grabbed a towel and tossed it over the mess. “Well, Jesse’s never gonna get his deposit back now.”

Aiden let out a bark of laughter, and immediately groaned and threw up some more. “Shower,” he mumbled when he was finished.

“It’s over here,” she told him. “You’re going to have to get yourself there. I can’t help you.”

“Right, then.” Leaving the towel, he proceeded to crawl the short distance to the bathroom.

Shea ran ahead and turned on the water for him, then got out of his way so he could get himself in there. “I’ll call downstairs and see if they can send up some whiskey.”

He nodded, concentrating on getting his clothes off. “I feel like I’ve been dunked in the sewer and left to prune.”

“That’s disgusting.” Her stomach turned just thinking about it.

He yanked his soiled shirt off and started working on his pants between heaves, and Shea went over to the phone and convinced them to send up a bottle and charge it to the room. When that was done, she sat down to wait. It was a few seconds before she remembered the case.

Picking it up, she set it on the bed. It had two locks. They looked stronger than those found on a normal briefcase. With a quick tug, she broke them from their fastening and opened the case.

Vials of blood, each cushioned with cloth, filled the case. Hundreds of them.

The demon blood.

Her hands began to shake. Reaching out, she picked up a vial and stared at it. It wasn’t glass, but some type of plastic or something. A loud knock on the door startled her so, she dropped it on the carpet. Swiping it up and setting it back in the case, she rushed to the door. But it was only Aiden’s whiskey.

She shut the case again and took the entire bottle in to Aiden. The curtain was still open, and water was getting all over the floor. She found him sitting in the shower with his knees pulled up and his arms wrapped around his legs. Even as sick as he was, he was a beautiful male. Not as perfect as Jesse in her eyes, but damn close. Even she could appreciate that, though he was nothing but a brother to her. And a pain in the ass one, at that.

Clearing her throat, she made her presence known. “Here’s your whiskey.”

His head swung around toward her voice. “Would you open it, please? And hand it in here?”

“Sure.” She opened the bottle and gave it to him. He gulped down half the bottle and lowered it with a hiss. “Ah, that bloody burns.”

“Can I do anything to help?” Babysitting Aiden was the last thing she wanted to do. She needed to be searching for her missing warlock, but she couldn’t just leave him like this.

“I’ll sort it out in just a bit.” He groaned and gagged, then drank some more. “What was in the case?”

Shea hesitated, but then berated herself for even thinking of not telling him. She needed to tell the others what Jesse’s plan was, and Aiden would be a good start. Hopefully, it wouldn’t bring out the demon in him again. As Jesse was blinded by his hatred for his father, she would have to make the right decision for him. He would see it was the correct decision once it was all over.

So, why did she feel so shitty about it?

She quickly told Aiden the gist of it before she could change her mind. While she talked, she grabbed a washcloth and the soap and got onto her knees beside him. Water soaked through her jeans, but it was the least of her worries right now. Careful to keep the cloth wadded up and not to touch his skin, she started to wash him.

She tried not to think of all the implications to Jesse. He had to understand why she couldn’t allow him to carry through with his plan. There had to be another way to stop his father, and she would help him.

Aiden listened to the entire story, for once not interrupting her, until she was completely out of words. “You know we can’t let him do this.”

Shea nodded. “I know.” She concentrated on not touching his skin while she scrubbed his back. “Stopping him was not the reason I came with him in the beginning.” She peeked up at him to see how he was taking that news.

Tired gray eyes stared back at her impassively.

Her arm dropped onto her lap. The soapy water dripping from the washcloth. “I came with him because I…I just wanted to be with him. I can’t really explain it.”

“It’s the mating instinct. We know who they are before any blood is exchanged.” He lifted his face up to the water and ran a hand over his wet hair, slicking it back. “I doubt you would’ve been able to resist the bloke for long, even if you’d tried harder.”

Adding more soap to the cloth, she began to wash his shoulders and arms.

“This is worse than having the werewolves help me,” he grumbled.

She rolled her eyes. “I think you’re exaggerating.”

“But I’m not, though. You’re like my sister, Shea. This is very strange.”

“Well, you’ll just have to deal with it.”

“All right, then. But keep your hands away from my willy.”

She laughed. She couldn’t help it. Despite everything, it felt good to have Aiden being…well, Aiden.

After a few minutes of companionable silence passed, Aiden set his whiskey bottle down with a clank and grabbed the cloth from her. “Go. Go find him.”

She sat back on her heels. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“Well, you’re not going to find him in the shower with me, that’s for bloody sure.”

“I thought you hated him?”

“I do. But I would rather know where he is and what he’s doing.”

So would she, but for entirely different reasons. She shook her head and took the cloth back. “I have a few minutes.”

Aiden was quiet after that, except to ask her to scrub him harder now and again. When he felt sufficiently less disgusting and could stand up, she turned off the water and threw him a towel. With one hand holding his towel on, and the other on the wall, he stood with no help from Shea. “Thank you,” he told her sincerely. “For holding steady through all of this.”

“No problem.” She went out to the dresser and found one of Jesse’s shirts for him to wear, as his was covered with blood. Holding it to her face, she inhaled the warlock’s scent. Even that little bit had her fangs aching and her blood rushing. Removing the soft material from her face, she took a breath to clear her senses and threw it in to Aiden. “Here you go.”

He eyed the offending item, his nose wrinkled in distaste. “Can’t I borrow one of your shirts instead?”

“My shirts won’t fit you.”

“That’s not my biggest concern right now.”

For someone as fashion conscious as Aiden to want to wear something that didn’t fit him like a second skin said a lot about what he thought about wearing Jesse’s shirt. “Just put it on,” she ordered.

He grumbled a bit about it, but finally did as he was told.

By the time he finished dressing and came out, Shea was waiting by the door with her bag, the case of blood, and Cruthú’s cage wrapped up in her arms. It was a small thing, to bring the cage, but it made her feel closer to him, somehow. “Are you ready?”

Aiden checked his hair in the mirror. Shea could see he still wasn’t feeling quite up to par, but he was trying to hide it.

“Where are we going? If it’s to search for your arsehole of a mate, you can count me out. I would just be a third wheel. I’d rather go sit in the hotel room and wait for Nikulas. It will give me the chance to catch up on the last season of Vikings.”

Shea opened the door and waited for Aiden to join her before admitting, “I don’t know where he is, Aiden. I can’t feel him. I wouldn’t have the first clue where to look.”

Pressing the button for the elevator, he took her bag from her and said, “You said he’s bound and determined to get the demons out of their borrowed bodies and back into their own, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it would make sense to me that to do that, he would need to go where the demons are. Where else would a warlock who specializes in releasing demons be needed, but at the gates of hell themselves?”

A spark of hope ignited in her chest. “The altar,” she said as the doors opened.

“The altar,” Aiden agreed.