Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
The alarm on Caleb’s phone went off at seven-thirty the next morning, the same time he’d had it set for the past few months.
Unlike his old life in Greencastle, where his mother had insisted that the household follow her schedule — well, at least until he made his escape at twenty, when he’d bought his loft apartment in Greencastle’s historic downtown and was able to assert some measure of independence — here in Las Vegas, he’d found himself settling into his own rhythm.
Morning workouts in the home gym he’d set up in one of the spare bedrooms, followed by whatever needed attention at the flip house he was working on at the moment, with the rest of the day open for any crises that might emerge.
And lately, there had been plenty of those.
He rolled over and picked up his phone from the spot where it rested on the nightstand, then squinted at the screen. Three missed calls from Pru, all within the last twenty minutes. That wasn’t good.
Maybe he should rethink putting the thing on “do not disturb” overnight.
Before he could even sit up properly, the screen showed another call coming in. This time, it was Ty.
“We’ve got a problem,” the half angel said as soon as Caleb answered. Obviously, he didn’t want to waste time on “good mornings.” “Multiple incidents across the city. The activity started a little before six this morning.”
Of course it did. Right then, Caleb found himself wishing for the good ol’ days back in January when all he’d had to deal with was a bunch of demons trying to chase him out of town because he was hurting their bottom line by winning all that money at the gaming tables.
Simple greed had been a lot easier to deal with than this current clusterfuck.
“What sort of incidents?” he asked as he moved toward his dresser to grab some clothes. It sure looked like he was going to have to skip the workout this morning.
“Coordinated attacks on wedding venues,” Ty replied. “But not just the chapels we’ve been watching — it looks like they’ve expanded to every major event space in the city…hotels, restaurants, convention centers. Anywhere people might gather for celebrations, just like we were afraid might happen.”
This unwelcome news made every muscle in Caleb’s neck and shoulders tense. Deep down, he supposed he’d been hoping that after he and Delia had vanquished the demons at the Silver Bell, things might quiet down, if only for a little while.
No such luck.
“How many locations?” he asked, scrubbing a hand through his hair, inwardly glad that it was never what you could exactly call controlled.
“At least twenty that we’ve confirmed so far,” Ty said. “Pru’s been monitoring her police scanner, and the reports are still coming in. Electrical fires, structural collapses, unexplained equipment failures. The city’s emergency services are starting to get overwhelmed.”
Caleb pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, trying to figure out what this kind of widescale activity meant. If the demons were making such bold moves in broad daylight, then they were either desperate or supremely confident.
Neither option was particularly comforting.
He also hated the idea of innocent bystanders getting caught up in a mess that was none of their making. “Any injuries?”
“So far, no. That’s what’s strange about all this.
Every incident seems to have happened when the venues were empty — overnight cleaning staff had already left, morning setup crews hadn’t arrived yet.
It’s like the demons timed everything perfectly to cause maximum disruption with minimal casualties. ”
Which suggested they wanted chaos, not a body count. At least, that was the impression Caleb was getting from Ty’s report. Right now, it seemed as if the havoc the demons were causing in the city probably wasn’t quite enough for anyone to start connecting the otherworldly dots.
“Where do you want to meet?” he asked, already knowing he’d need to see some of these sites firsthand to get a sense of what the gang was dealing with.
“Pru’s place. It’s closest to the center of town, and Delia’s already on her way over. We need to coordinate our response before they escalate further.”
Caleb hated the idea of her getting caught up in this mess any more than she already had.
After what they’d shared last night — the openness he’d seen in her eyes when she’d told him she loved him, the way she’d fit so perfectly against him as they sat on the couch — the idea of her walking into danger made something fierce and possessive rise within him.
But she was part of this, whether he liked it or not. Hell, she might be better equipped than any of them to handle supernatural threats, given her growing psychic abilities.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” he said.
“Make it ten if you can. I’ve got a feeling we’re running out of time.”
Of course they were.
Despite the half angel’s urgency, Caleb stood in his bedroom for a moment after he ended the call, doing what he could to allow his enhanced senses to stretch out across the city.
Even here, far from most of the affected locations, he could sense a kind of wrongness in the air — a spiritual disturbance that set his teeth on edge and made the demon blood in his veins respond with restless energy.
Whatever was happening, it was bigger than anything his little group of friends had faced so far.
He grabbed his keys and wallet, and on his way to the garage, he paused by the coat closet in the foyer.
Then he reached inside and pulled out a small gym bag he’d been keeping there for emergencies.
In the bag were bottles of holy water, a few basic first aid supplies, and a knife that had been blessed by three different priests.
He’d put the gear together after returning from Laughlin, figuring he needed to have a kit for the supernatural interruptions that seemed to be occurring in his life with more and more frequency.
But he really hadn’t thought he’d need to use it this soon.
The drive to Pru’s condo building should have taken fifteen minutes, but Caleb made it in seven.
He’d pushed his Mercedes harder than he probably should have, using his enhanced reflexes to navigate morning traffic with a kind of reckless skill that would have looked impressive to any observers — but not so impressive as to attract any unwanted attention from the local authorities.
He guessed that morning, they were probably busy elsewhere.
After leaving the car in one of the condo building’s guest parking spaces, he took the elevator up, noting that he could sense increasingly strong energetic disturbances the higher he went.
By the time he reached the sixth floor, the feeling was strong enough to make him slightly nauseated.
Whatever Pru had been monitoring from her condo, it was definitely affecting the local energy patterns.
When he knocked at the door to Pru’s condo, a tense-looking Delia opened it and stepped out of the way so he could come inside.
He gave her a brief squeeze of the hand — he kind of doubted Ty or Pru would appreciate any obvious displays of affection — and followed her into the dining room.
There, he saw the two others standing in what looked like a war room setup — multiple laptops, printed maps taped to the walls, and EMF meters and other gadgets scattered across the table, among them a police scanner, its antenna tacked to the ceiling so Pru could get the best reception.
Clearly, she’d been busy over the past few hours. Where had she even gotten all this stuff?
Maybe former boyfriends, he thought with an inner grin. After all, if she’d once dated a pickpocket, as she’d revealed during their time in Laughlin, who knew what other useful SOs might be lurking in her past?
“About time,” she remarked as he approached. Today, her green hair hung loose, as if she couldn’t be bothered with even a ponytail, and, judging by her jittery air, she’d probably been subsisting on coffee and not much else. “You need to see this.”
She gestured toward the largest laptop screen, which displayed a real-time map of Las Vegas with dozens of red dots scattered across it. As Caleb watched, three more dots appeared.
“Each dot represents a supernatural incident,” Ty explained, shifting slightly so Caleb and Delia could move closer. “The pattern is becoming clearer as we hear more reports.”
He studied the map, trying to see what the others had already figured out. The dots appeared random at first, but as he let his gaze unfocus slightly, a pattern began to emerge. It sure seemed as if all those dots formed a rough geometric shape that encompassed most of the Las Vegas valley.
“We’d already guessed they were trying to create some kind of ritual circle,” Delia said quietly.
She stood close enough to him that Caleb could sense her body’s warmth, and despite the chaos unfolding in the city around them, he wished he could wrap an arm around her waist and pull her even closer.
“But now we can tell it’s not just any circle. Look at the spacing.”
She was right. Now that he could see it, the pattern was unmistakable. Each incident site corresponded to a specific point in what appeared to be an elaborate summoning diagram — one that used the entire city as its foundation.
“How big is it?” Caleb asked, even though he suspected he already knew the answer.
“Big enough to summon something we really don’t want to deal with,” Ty replied, his tone grim. “Best guess is that they’re attempting to create a portal large enough for a major demon lord to cross over. It has to be someone from the upper echelons of Hell’s hierarchy.”