Urian entered his father’s study with the pride and grace of a lethal predator. Looking neither left nor right, he made his way straight to where his father stood in front of his desk to report his findings from the Inferno, where he’d gone earlier to speak to the owner Dante Pontis’s brother, Sal. A smarmy little panther.

After that encounter, he still felt the need to shower and he’d barely spent fifteen minutes talking to the were-beast.

His father narrowed his gaze on him. “Any word?”

Urian shook his head. “Not yet. The Were-Hunter said he’d lost her scent, but that he will pick her up again.”

His father clapped him on the back. “I want at least twenty standing by. There’s no way she’ll escape us all.”

Effing awesome. Make this as hard on me as you can. Outwardly, Urian showed no emotion whatsoever. “I’ll summon the Illuminati.”

His father inclined his head to him. “Good. And this time, I’ll go with you.”

That was a whole lot of disconcerting. His father never went on these runs with them. For that matter, Urian couldn’t remember the last time his father had even left Kalosis.

Normally Trates brought the meals here for his father to suck the souls of humans out in their main hall.

Damn, the world really was coming to an end. And he had a front-row seat for it.

A part of him wanted to warn his father that the human realm was extremely different than it’d been the last time he’d ventured out, but experience had taught him to never do such a thing. His father tended to view “advice” as condescension. And that never went well for the person giving it.

Not even his sons.

So Urian bit his tongue and summoned his soldiers for their raid on Cassandra’s apartment. But in the back of his mind was the question of how to safely get her out of there now that his father was going with him. It’d never been easy in the past.

This was going to be a hell of a lot harder.

Yet there was no way he could let her die. Phoebe would never forgive him for it.

Shit. This was about to get ugly.

Urian was still trying to come up with a plausible escape plan for Cassandra, but damn it, every one of their people was right on top of him. He couldn’t take a breath that one of them didn’t exhale.

It was ridiculous. He was about to feign a heart attack. If only a Daimon could have one.

Frustrated, he had no choice but to watch as his father knocked on the front door of Cassandra’s apartment and pretended to be a deliveryman.

Using his powers, he listened carefully to see if Kat was in there with her.

“Kat?” He heard Cassandra calling.

No one answered.

“Kat?” she tried again.

His father knocked again, more demanding this time.

Urian heard the sounds of rushing feet, as if his sister-in-law were searching the rooms for something. He could taste her fear as she headed to the back of the apartment.

His father vanished, no doubt intending to meet her there.

Cassandra stopped moving. “Kat, is that you?”

“Yeah, let me in.”

Urian flinched as he realized that wasn’t Katra’s voice, but his father pretending to be her. Crap! He’d heard the kori speaking enough to recognize the difference in cadence.

He’s going to kill her …

Cassandra laughed nervously as she opened the door and Urian flashed himself to the back to run interference, and hopefully save her life.

Sadly, he misjudged the distance and ended up landing inside her apartment, a few feet behind her. Good going, dumbass.

Lucky for him, she was too mesmerized by his father to notice that she had company inside her home, and his father was too busy taunting her to care that he’d screwed up. That was bad enough. Worse? Another Daimon popped in beside him.

Seriously? He couldn’t catch a break tonight with them. Leave it to him to get stuck with an overachiever.

“Did you miss me, princess?” his father taunted from outside her back door in a voice identical to Kat’s.

Cassandra stood there, gaping. “What are you, the friggin’ Terminator?”

His father smirked. “No. I’m the Harbinger who is merely preparing the way for the Destroyer.” He reached for her.

Cassandra stepped back and almost into Urian, who also had to take a step away from her to keep from being a rude awakening that she had an uninvited guest—courtesy of a loophole she didn’t realize about apartment buildings. He also had to shove his companion out of her way.

Still unaware of them, she pulled out a dagger from her waist and sliced his father’s arm.

His eyes turning red, his father hissed.

Then she spun about and realized they were in the apartment with her. Awesome. With a piercing scream, she caught his friend in the chest with her dagger.

He evaporated into a golden-black cloud before Urian could pull him to safety. Grinding his teeth, he cursed himself for not being quicker.

Spinning around, Cassandra kicked his father back, but he didn’t go completely out the door. Instead, he only blocked it more. Which prevented her from escaping.

“You’re quick.” He healed his arm, causing her to gasp at his powers. “I’ll give you that.”

Cassandra lifted her chin defiantly, reminding him of a gesture Phoebe used whenever Urian pissed her off. “You don’t know the half of it.”

She kneed the next one of their guys who reached her and fought Urian’s second-in-command. His father stayed back, watching her carefully so that he could learn her techniques and use them against her.

Urian knew if he didn’t get her out of here, or shield her movements, his father was about to attack her any second and end her existence.

It was now or never.

Determined, he rushed her.

To his shock, she didn’t run away. Rather, she caught him under the arm and flipped him over. Urian hit the ground with a loud grunt that left him reeling. Just as she went to stab him, his father came out of nowhere and grabbed her arm before she could pierce his Daimon’s mark.

“No one attacks Urian!”

She shrieked as he wrenched the dagger from her hand. Then she made the fatal move as so many had before her.

Cassandra met his father’s eyes that swirled like mercury silver. Those eyes were hypnotic. They danced and held everyone spellbound. Turned their thoughts to oatmeal.

Urian literally watched as all the fight inside her vanished. A sly, seductive smile curved his father’s lips. “See how easy it is when you don’t fight?”

He tilted her head to the side to give him access to her carotid artery. His father met Urian’s gaze and let laughter rumble deep in his throat a moment before he sank his teeth into her neck.

“Am I interrupting?”

Urian bared his fangs as he recognized that deep baritone. This was the one he affectionately called the Muppet Dark-Hunter because his accent reminded him of the Swedish Chef.

The huge bastard jerked his father away from Cassandra. Which was good, but …

Urian ran to check on him while the Dark-Hunter whisked his sister-in-law up into his arms and ran with her. “Get them!” he shouted at his team, knowing they’d never catch up. So it gave them a chance to get away, and Urian an excuse to let them.

Or so he thought.

No sooner did he touch his father’s shoulder than his father’s eyes turned red and he sprang to life. Worse, he shifted into his dragon form and launched into flight.

Cursing, Urian went running to catch them.

He manifested a motorcycle just so that he could chase after Wulf’s dark green Expedition.

Cassandra and crew had just locked the doors when his father struck the roof in his large black dragon form.

“Let her out and you can live,” the dragon said in Stryker’s voice.

Wulf answered by putting his SUV in reverse and gunning it. He turned the wheel and sent the beast flying.

The dragon shrieked and blew a blast of fire at them. The Dark-Hunter kept going, without slowing. The dragon took flight and dove at them, then arced up, high into the sky, before it vanished into a shimmery cloud of gold.

“What the hell was that?” Wulf asked.

“He’s Apostolos,” Cassandra murmured as she struggled to snap herself out of her daze. “The son of the Atlantean Destroyer and a god in his own right. We’re so screwed.”

Wulf let out a disgusted sound. “Yeah well, I don’t let anyone screw me until they kiss me and since there’s not even a snowball’s chance in hell of me kissing that bastard, we’re not screwed.”

But as his Expedition was suddenly surrounded by eight Daimons on motorcycles, he reconsidered that.

For three seconds at least.

Wulf laughed. “You know the beauty of driving one of these?”

“No.”

He swerved his Expedition into three of the bikes and knocked them from the road. “You can swat a Daimon like a mosquito.”

“Well, since they’re both bloodsucking insects, I say go for it.”

Urian wasn’t amused as he heard their conversation. And definitely not when Wulf almost clipped him. Braking, he motioned for the other four Daimons with him to let them go.

Not just because it was Phoebe’s sister, but because he didn’t want to see anyone else die tonight.

He swerved his Hayabusa and went back to check the three Illuminati who’d been wrecked to see if they needed medical attention to get home.