Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
As much of a relief as it had been to talk to Caleb, to realize he’d somehow heard her in his mind and that this dark room that held her captive couldn’t keep her thoughts imprisoned, the place felt even more like a gaping hole in the world once their connection had been cut off.
Had her captors found out she was speaking with him and intervened to break their contact?
Maybe, although Delia thought it just as likely that the connection had been severed because she didn’t have the mental capacity to keep it going any longer.
Once again, what she didn’t know about these gifts of hers seemed almost overwhelming.
On the other hand, she’d managed to hold a psychic conversation that felt as if it had gone on for at least a minute, maybe longer.
And that seemed to tell her she was getting better at all this, almost as if something deep in her subconscious knew things her waking mind didn’t.
She moved on the bed or chaise or whatever it was, scootching backward until her shoulders touched a wall.
All right, that meant this place had some actual physical boundaries, wasn’t just a featureless void hiding in some strange dimension with no actual relation to reality.
This cheered her, especially since she knew that before her talk with Caleb, she hadn’t been able to move enough to feel the wall or even know it was there.
Did that mean whatever spell was holding her here had begun to weaken, if only the smallest bit?
In another time, she might have laughed at herself for entertaining the notion that magic and spells were even a real thing. But she’d seen too much over the past couple of months to ignore the simple truth that the universe was a much more complicated place than she’d ever imagined.
If the spell was weakening, then she needed to do whatever she could to continue to push against it.
With enough pressure placed on the enchantment, it might finally shatter altogether.
Focus.
She breathed in and out. This time, though, she didn’t close her eyes.
No, she wanted to see whatever she could.
A wall behind her. A bed beneath her.
And it was a bed — a daybed, she realized, with a padded back and padded head- and footboard, which was why she hadn’t been able to tell whether it was a chaise lounge or a regular old bed.
The upholstery was nubby beneath her fingers, and even though she would have said she couldn’t see a damn thing in there, somehow she knew the fabric was dark blue, almost navy.
Okay, that was something. Possibly not the most important piece of information in the world, but it told her that she was already perceiving far more than she had a few hours ago.
She stared into the darkness, and somehow knew she was trapped in a small room about ten feet by twelve, the size of a standard bedroom.
Was she in someone’s house?
At once, she dismissed that idea. This couldn’t be a normal bedroom because it didn’t have any windows — or a closet, she realized. On the far side of the space was a single door.
If she were somehow able to get up from the daybed and walk over there, would it open?
No, she told herself. It had two deadbolts in addition to the lock in the doorknob. Even if she somehow made it over there, she’d never get past all those locks.
Or…would she?
It was a novel concept, realizing that she truly had no idea what she could or couldn’t do. Someone she doubted she’d be able to Hulk out and smash right through the thing, and yet maybe there was something she could do with her mind to get the door unlocked.
Could the same powers that allowed her to talk to Caleb using only the force of her thoughts be enough to somehow slip inside those locks and move the tumblers so the door would open on its own?
A tempting idea. She just didn’t know whether it would work.
Probably better to start with baby steps…literally.
She shifted again and knew she was getting close to the edge of the bed. When she tried to swing her feet over so she could stand up, however, it was as if they’d hit some kind of weird rubbery barrier.
“Ouch!”
Yes, that was her voice. She’d heard it, and she knew she’d uttered the syllable out loud because whatever spell was holding her here on the daybed had — up until now, anyway — kept her silent.
Not being able to get off the bed was something of a setback. But knowing she hadn’t been utterly silenced helped a little to remove the sting from that failure.
“I’m here,” she said aloud.
Just two words, but they were enough to tell her that one “ouch” hadn’t been a fluke.
She sat cross-legged on the daybed and did a little more deep-breathing. Oddly, she experienced just the faintest twinge of hunger.
That would have been a relief, except she knew if she was starting to feel hungry, then she’d probably soon be thirsty as well. And if her body woke up much more, then she was going to be seriously bemoaning the lack of a bathroom around here.
Still, it was another crack in the spell, and that had to count for something.
Then she closed her eyes for a few seconds and caught a flash of an image.
She knew she’d never seen the man before.
He was tall and thin, with pale hair and a face that was attractive in a bony, beaky sort of way.
His dark gray suit was obviously expensive, but it still hung on him, although she couldn’t say for sure whether that was because he’d recently lost weight or because he couldn’t be bothered to get the thing properly tailored.
He stood behind a desk in what appeared to be a fancy office, with a spectacular view of the Colorado River hundreds of feet below. However, the big, expensive desk of burled walnut didn’t hold a computer or a phone or anything else that you might have expected in such a setting.
No, a black cloth covered the surface, and on that cloth a series of small crystals, all red and black, had been placed in a pattern Delia didn’t recognize but somehow still felt wrong, as if its proportions were just enough off that they managed to hurt her eyes.
A bowl about a hands-breadth across held some kind of dark liquid.
The man reached into the bowl with one finger and withdrew it, then smeared the reddish liquid…blood, she was sure…across the surface of a hunk of what she thought was either onyx or obsidian.
Almost at once, her temple twinged, and she reached up and pressed a hand against her head.
Great, was she getting a migraine now on top of everything else?
Again, the man dipped his finger into the bowl of blood, and this time he smeared it on a reddish crystal that she didn’t recognize. Garnet, maybe?
Now it felt as if something had pinched her forehead, and she winced.
At the same time, a strange dizziness descended, and she was suddenly very glad that she hadn’t been able to get up from the daybed and start exploring her prison.
If she’d been standing when that wave of vertigo hit, she might very well have fallen right over.
Would anyone have come to her rescue if she’d cried out?
Doubtful.
The vertigo disappeared as suddenly as it had come. In her mind, the man reached for a black cloth and wiped the traces of blood from his fingertips.
Realization flared, bright and painful as that twinge in her forehead had been.
Oh, dear God.
He wasn’t a man.
He was a demon in disguise, just like Robert Hendricks had been…just like some of the players in the Desert Paradise poker tournament. And the ritual the blond man had been conducting was designed to tap into her powers.
That was why she’d been caught here. So he could milk her brain whenever he liked.
But for what purpose? She’d told Caleb it was because of the river, but she still didn’t understand exactly why.
The man went to the window and looked out. Across from the building where he stood was a tall white tower with hundreds of windows, their mirrored glass blinding in the sun.
However, not so blinding that she couldn’t see the logo spelled out in what would probably be garish neon at night.
Aquarius.
The hotel had two towers, so the blond man — demon, she reminded herself — must be standing in one of them.
And although she couldn’t say for sure how she knew, Delia understood that was where she was imprisoned now.
Not in a hotel room, but in some secret chamber below the casino floor.
Possibly a vault, or maybe just a storage space.
That would explain why it didn’t have any windows, why it was so utterly black in here.
Gritting her teeth, she pushed against the rubbery membrane that had kept her trapped on the bed. It seemed to stretch and stretch — and then it broke with a rebound that somehow made her ears ring, even though everything had remained utterly silent inside her prison.
One foot touched the floor, and then another. It was cool under her bare feet, definitely not carpet. Some kind of linoleum, though, because it didn’t feel hard enough to be tile.
As soon as she stood up, the room seemed to spin around her, and she put a hand down on the bed to steady herself. A few breaths, and the dizziness was gone.
Her fingers trailed along the daybed until they found the wall. It was cool and smooth but definitely seemed to be drywall, again affirming her suspicion that this was an interior room on one of the hotel’s sublevels.
She walked about ten paces and then hit a corner. That was fine — if nothing else, it seemed as if the room was about the size she’d thought it would be.
Just as she was about to start measuring the next wall, a flood of images hit her brain — an older woman falling to her knees and gasping, hands at her throat as if something was choking her.
Another woman, but much younger, maybe around Delia’s age, hurrying out of an apartment with suitcases in both hands, throwing frightened looks over her shoulder as she went.
A horrible accident on a lonely highway, one vehicle looking as if it had somehow managed to wedge itself under a semi.
No one in the car could have survived that impact.
They needed us gone, rang through her mind, and Delia looked around in horror, even though there was nothing to see in that black, black room.
Who needed you gone? she wanted to ask, but she knew she wouldn’t get an answer to that question. What she’d just experienced had been echoes of trauma, stray energy that had hung in the air around Laughlin, even though the people she’d glimpsed were now long gone.
But she’d seen those echoes…and she thought she knew what they meant.
Or at least partially. She couldn’t say for sure why the river was so important to the blond demon in her vision, but she guessed that he or his minions had driven out or killed anyone who’d been trying to protect it.
And she knew without knowing how she knew that the older woman must have been Alba Sanchez, the river’s last guardian.
House…stays.
Those words had been utterly cryptic when Alba’s ghost had uttered them. Now, though, they’d taken on a new meaning.
The house was crucial in all this, but again, Delia couldn’t quite grasp that piece of the puzzle. Why could her gift show her some things and not others?
Because she wasn’t a god or an angel or a demon. She was a human woman with a strange talent, and that meant it didn’t always do what she wanted it to do.
But even if she wasn’t an angel or a demon, she knew that Ty and Caleb were…or at least, possessed enough supernatural heritage that they could do things she couldn’t.
And they were looking for her.
They had to know about the blond man.
They had to know she was trapped somewhere beneath the Aquarius.
Delia flattened herself against the wall, trying to stand as steadily and quietly as she could. She didn’t know if this was going to work, but she had to make the attempt anyway.
Caleb, I’m being held beneath one of the towers of the Aquarius hotel.