Chapter 15 #2
“I’m not sure,” he said, his tone heavy.
“I have to believe that Sellers kidnapped Delia because he has some specific purpose for her in mind, but I don’t know when it’s going to happen.
If it was a full moon tonight — or better yet, the dark of the moon — then I’d say he was waiting for that.
But it’s just a little past a quarter right now and doesn’t have any particular strength of its own. ”
Caleb didn’t bother to ask how Ty knew the exact phase of the moon. Some people seemed to pay attention to that sort of thing, and if the moon’s energy at any given time affected magical rituals, then he supposed it was somewhat valuable information.
“Maybe it’s not the moon,” Pru said. She also had avoided alcohol and was instead drinking some sparkling water with a slice of lime. “Maybe it’s just that Sellers needs it to be dark before he does…well, whatever he’s planning on doing.”
Rather than shoot down that idea, Ty gave a thoughtful nod.
“That makes sense,” he replied. “He waited until it was dark before he took all the human vessels on that boat cruise so he could mark them with the sigils. I can see how he would want to use the powers of darkness to make his ritual that much stronger.”
“And even if we don’t know exactly how he’s going to accomplish it, I think he must be trying to open a portal and bring his demon friends over,” Caleb said. “It’s the only logical explanation for all this bullshit he’s been pulling.”
Prudence frowned and pushed at the slice of lime in her glass with the end of her straw. “But I thought he didn’t know where the portal was located.”
“He doesn’t know where the one we found is located,” Caleb corrected her. “That map we discovered has power points all up and down the river, including the one right beneath the Aquarius. Maybe he found that one and is planning to have some kind of ritual there.”
“I can see that,” Ty said. He ran a hand over his chin, eyes narrowing slightly as he appeared to work at the problem.
“The portal near Alba’s house is stronger, if the relative size of the stars we found on the map is any indication, but if Sellers somehow manages to rope Delia into the ritual, that might not matter.
She could be enough to complete the circuit… and strengthen it.”
That didn’t sound good at all. “Then we have to stop him,” Caleb replied. “I’ve spent time in Hell, and believe me, you don’t want a bunch of demons rampaging around Nevada.”
“Or anywhere else,” Pru remarked darkly. “The question is, where’s the portal? Somewhere down in the sublevel where we were poking around?”
“I doubt it,” Ty said. “Too much interference from manmade materials. It would need to be like the chamber where we found the map, something carved out of the earth itself. And it would have to be as close to the river as possible, just because Sellers would want to utilize Delia’s connection to it to make her contribution more powerful. ”
As far as Caleb could tell, the only good thing about all this was that Delia was clearly important to the demon, so he probably wouldn’t do anything to hurt her.
At least, not until the ritual was over, which made it even more urgent that they find her before all this went down.
“Maybe there’s a tunnel somewhere,” he suggested. “You know, sort of like the tunnel we found that connected Alba Sanchez’s basement to the map room. Sellers could have made it lead off the lowest sublevel and hidden the entrance or something.”
Ty picked up his glass of water and drank as he pondered that proposition.
“I suppose it’s possible. A high-level demon would be able to make sure something like that stayed concealed, so even if the hotel’s employees were conducting ordinary business down there, they wouldn’t necessarily see anything strange. ”
Expression resigned, Pru said, “Does that mean we’re going back down to the sublevels? Because I honestly don’t think that’s the best idea in the world.”
“Why not?” Caleb replied, and she raised an eyebrow, as if she couldn’t possibly believe he was that dense.
“Because it’s now after one o’clock. The person I lifted that keycard from has probably reported it stolen, which means hotel security would have already deactivated it.
And if I were running things around here, I’d know our system might have been compromised, and I’d post security guards wherever there’s a door controlled by one of those card locks.
They might just be the Aquarius’s version of rent-a-cops, but they’re still going to be a lot harder to get past than the normal unmanned security measures. ”
Right. Caleb had honestly forgotten about that aspect of the situation, mainly because it had been so easy to get into the sublevel that he hadn’t thought about any future complications that might crop up.
“Well, I can still go back in,” he said. “I can teleport, remember?”
Pru stared at him, nonplussed. “What about the rest of us?”
“I can, too,” Ty said.
She worked her jaw, clearly not thrilled with either of them. “Yeah, but I can’t. What am I supposed to do — sit in the bar and drink mai tais and babysit our little friend here?”
Caleb thought there were worse fates, especially since Aaron seemed pretty docile at the moment.
He continued to work away at the blooming onion in the middle of the table and, in fact, had consumed far more than his fair share, mostly because the rest of them had been too preoccupied with their conversation to take more than a few cursory bites of the appetizer.
“Basically, yeah,” he replied.
“No way,” she returned. “Maybe I don’t have all your superpowers, but — ”
“But nothing,” Ty cut in, and she shot him an angry glare. “You’ve done a lot to help out, and neither of us wants to discount that. Now, though, I think we’re coming to a point where it’s better — and safer — for you to stand back.”
She was silent for a moment. Caleb could practically see the way she wrestled with her thoughts, with the knowledge that, as smart and capable as she was, she still didn’t have the kind of supernatural abilities that would assist her in a face-off with a demon master and his minions.
“I don’t like feeling useless,” she said.
“You’re not useless,” Caleb responded at once. “We wouldn’t have gotten anywhere as far as we have without you. But you need to keep an eye on Aaron, and — ”
“And what?” Pru asked, dark eyes still glinting with a hard, angry light. “What if the big boss demon asserts control over him again? How am I supposed to handle that? It’s not like I’m going to have Caleb with me to bleed all over him again and get him to settle down.”
“You use this,” Ty said calmly, and set a small plastic bottle down on the table in front of her.
Caleb recognized it all too well. He and Delia had deployed the same bottles in their previous confrontations with demons.
Holy water.
It seemed Pru knew what it was as well — probably since Delia had been using the stuff in her ghost-whispering business long before she got tangled up with demons — because she released a breath and then reached out and deposited it in her satchel.
“If I use that, won’t the boss demon know the gig is up?”
“He’ll already know that,” Caleb said, “because we’ll be in his face, trying to rescue Delia and stop him from completing the ritual. This is just insurance to keep Aaron from joining the party.”
Again, Prudence was silent for a moment, most likely because she was trying to come up with a convincing argument as to why she should stick with them and not get left behind. It didn’t seem as if she was successful, since she replied, “Okay, I get it. I don’t like it…but I get it.”
“We’ll have lunch,” Ty said. “And then you should probably take Aaron back with you to our suite at Harrah’s — to keep him out of the line of fire,” he added hastily, since her eyes had begun to glint with annoyance again. “It’s neutral ground, and you should be safe there.”
Again with the “should.”
But Caleb understood that even Ty was trodding on some unfamiliar ground here, and he was just doing his best to make sure everyone involved made it out of this alive.
“And we’ll reconnoiter,” he said, and the half angel nodded.
“We need to locate the portal before nightfall so we have enough time to make a real plan of attack. But whenever we do find it, we’ll need to stand back and wait until the ritual begins.”
Now it was Caleb’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Don’t you think we should block the guy before he gets up a good head of steam?”
Unfazed, Ty stared back at Caleb and said, “If we do that, then we might miss our chance to rescue Delia. Until she’s actively participating in the ritual, August Sellers will keep her elsewhere. Moving too soon only lessens our chances of getting her away from him.”
Man, Caleb hated it when Ty Carter made sense.
“I don’t like it,” Caleb replied.
“You don’t have to like it,” Ty said. “You just have to be willing to do whatever’s going to result in August Sellers being taken out of the equation and Delia rescued. This isn’t about us. It’s about her.”
And that, Caleb realized, was a fact he couldn’t really dispute.