Nic didn’t even know how to respond to Derek’s statement, the idea was so ludicrous. “I don’t have a brother.”

“Yeah, you do. You’re looking at him. You just don’t remember me. Our father, Ben, took you from our house when you were eight years old, in the middle of the night. I don’t know why you don’t remember it, or me. Do you have any memories of our mother?”

Nic frowned. “My mother died when I was an infant. I had no brothers or sisters. Ever.”

“So. Somehow you’ve blocked it all out of your memories. Everything from before Dad took you.”

Why were they trying to get him to believe he’d been kidnapped as a child by his father, and that this guy was his brother? He’d have remembered that. Wouldn’t he? Even with the head injury he’d suffered as a kid, his father would have told him about a brother, about his mother.

These people were full of shit. They really were part of some brainwashing cult and were trying to get him to believe in this nonsense. If he fought against it, would they drug him again? He had to stay alert and level headed so he could fight them. He wasn’t going to say a word, just act cooperative until he figured something out.

“It gets worse,” Derek said.

Oh great. “Go on.”

“Our father, Ben, was one of the twelve Lords of the Sons of the Darkness.”

“What is that? Some secret organization?”

“You could, ah, say that. He was a demon.”

Okay, he was gonna need boots for bullshit this deep. “A demon. You mean like from the fires of hell, devil kind of thing?”

“Yes.”

“So that would make you and me demons.”

“Half demons. Our mother was human.”

“Uh huh. Does the bullshit stop anytime soon?”

Derek turned to Lou.

Lou shrugged. “It’s not like the average person is going to accept this at face value, Derek. Would you, would any of you, if you hadn’t seen it yourselves?”

So Lou was the leader. Some kind of prophet or savior in the eyes of the minion here. How in the hell had Nic gotten caught up in all this? Why had they chosen him? And more importantly, how was he going to get out of it?

“I don’t know what to do to convince him,” Derek said. “It’s not like I’m going to unleash the beast inside me. You know I won’t do that.”

At the mention of the beast inside him, Nic’s heart began to pound. Coincidence, that’s all it was. It wasn’t the same thing that Nic was going through, had nothing to do with his nightmares or experiences. It was a turn of phrase and nothing more.

“No one expects you to do that, babe. Not even if it would immediately prove to Nic that you speak the truth.”

A woman stepped up behind Derek and placed her hand on his shoulder. Gorgeous, with long dark hair that hung in waves over her shoulders. Even devoid of makeup she was breathtakingly beautiful. Some spark of recognition flashed in Nic’s mind. He’d seen her somewhere before, but where? In a magazine maybe?

Derek reached behind him and grasped her hand. “I can’t. I should, but I won’t let it out unless there’s no other choice. I don’t trust being able to control it.”

Again, Derek’s words mirrored Nic’s thoughts lately. He brushed it aside as coincidence. It wasn’t the same thing.

“That’s unnecessary,” Lou said. “We’ll convince Dominic another way.”

“You’re saying you can turn into some kind of demon?” Nic asked, hating that the question spilled from his mouth.

“Yeah. Or at least it came out of me before. On an island where we fought demons. Where Ben and I fought each other.”

A cold chill slid down Nic’s spine. Common sense told him not to comment, but he couldn’t let that statement alone. “You met my father.”

“I met our father. I grew up with the same man you did, Nic. At least until I was ten and you were eight and he took you from your bed and away from Mom and me. The two of you disappeared. I didn’t see him again until a couple months ago, on an island in the South Pacific. Underground, in a tunnel. We fought and the demon hunters killed him.”

Nic swallowed. “You’re saying you killed my father.”

“No, he killed a lord of the Sons of Darkness, a vicious demon who was trying to kill him.”

Nic’s gaze whipped to Shay. She regarded him with a look that he read as fierce loyalty to Derek, to all of them, he supposed. Her chin held high, her eyes sparkling with fire, her posture dared him to balk at what they said.

Whatever. It wasn’t like he believed them anyway. If his father was dead he’d have been notified. His uncle would have told him. He’d know…somehow.

Not that he and his father had a tight bond. They didn’t. They weren’t even close.

But goddamit, wouldn’t he know if his own father was dead?

None of this was true. He had to hold tight to that. Otherwise his entire world would crumble. They were playing mind games with him, trying to make him believe what they said was fact.

It wasn’t. His father was alive. There were no such things as demons.

The dreams he had at night about clawing monsters were just that—dreams. There was no correlation between the two.

Reality was something entirely different.