Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
The silence in Pru’s living room after they’d all regrouped there was the most terrifying sound Delia had ever heard. She sat on the edge of the black sectional, her phone still stubbornly pressed to her ear even though repeated calls to Caleb’s number just went over to voicemail.
Fifteen minutes earlier, Ty had received Caleb’s urgent message telling them all to abort and return to home base, and he’d passed it along to the other two.
Despite her own misgivings, Delia had dropped everything — to be honest, she’d been only too glad to get back someplace she hoped was relatively safe — and driven at top speed to Pru’s condo, expecting to find Caleb waiting for the group with an explanation for the sudden change in plans.
Instead, they’d found an empty condo and a phone number that no longer seemed to connect to anything.
The last thing any of them had heard from him was that voice — deep, harsh, utterly inhuman — calling Caleb “nephew” before his line went dead.
“Try his number again,” Pru said from her position at the dining room table, fingers flying over her laptop keyboard with desperate speed. Her tourmaline-green hair swung forward, halfway hiding her eyes, and her jaw was tight as she worked.
Delia knew that feeling all too well, the knot of worry deep in her gut, the desperate belief that if she did something…anything…she might be able to change the situation. She touched the screen to call Caleb’s number again, knowing it was pointless but still unable to stop herself.
Same result. Straight to voicemail, the cheerful recorded message a jarring contrast to the supernatural nightmare unfolding around them.
Hey, you’ve reached Caleb Lowe. I’m probably at my latest flip getting my hands dirty, so leave a message, and I’ll get back to you.
The normality of those casual words — latest flip, get back to you — felt like relics from another lifetime. Had it really been only a few days ago that their biggest worry was choosing the right flooring for Caleb’s latest acquisition?
Ty stood by the window, his usual calm cracking enough to show the strain beneath. “That voice,” he said, not turning around. “I’m not saying I’ve heard it before, but it didn’t sound like your regular garden-variety demon. Too cultured for that.”
“Who was it?” Delia asked, even though some part of her already knew the answer.
“We’ve already guessed that Vinea is involved in all this.
The way he called Caleb ‘nephew’….” Rather than bothering to complete the sentence, Ty finally turned to face the two watching women, his expression very sober.
“Now I’m almost sure he’s the one involved, because high-level demons often think of each other as brethren.
That explains the ‘nephew’ reference, although I suppose ‘great-nephew’ is probably more accurate.
Anyway, Vinea has been trapped in the underworld ever since the Fall, so you know he wants to get out. ”
“But that’s impossible,” Pru said, brows pulled together in frustration. “If he’s trapped in Hell, how is he here, somehow breaking into Caleb’s phone calls? How is he communicating with us?”
“I don’t know,” Ty replied. “Demons…especially demon lords…can be very difficult to predict.”
There was an understatement. Resolutely, Delia set her cell phone down on the coffee table. Maybe if she wasn’t holding it, she wouldn’t be consumed by the need to keep trying to call Caleb.
“Do you know anything about who Caleb’s grandfather is?” she asked. “How do you know it’s not Vinea? I mean, he’s a high-ranking demon lord, right?”
A certain stillness settled over Ty’s model-handsome features. Did that mean he knew the answer but didn’t want to reveal it, or simply that he didn’t like having to confess how he didn’t hold all the answers at his fingertips?
Apparently the latter, because he said, “We don’t know.
Although Caleb’s forebear would have occupied a high position in Hell, he was still only one of Belial’s servants.
There are many who were in service to Belial, so even though I suppose it might be possible to narrow it down to a list of suspects, we can’t really say for sure. ”
“But it wouldn’t be Vinea,” Pru said, when it seemed clear Delia wasn’t sure how to respond.
“No. Vinea is an Earl of Hell. Still a lord, but a higher rank than the servants Belial brought with him to Greencastle.”
Delia supposed that was something, although she realized the important thing here wasn’t which demon might or might not be Caleb’s grandfather.
No, what they really needed to focus on was how to track Caleb down.
He’d been observing outside the Angel’s Dream chapel, but if he’d really been intercepted by demons, he could now be anywhere in the city.
Or at least, anyplace where the ley lines ran, giving the demon cohort the additional power they needed to make sure their terrible plans came to fruition.
Before Ty could answer, Delia’s phone vibrated on the coffee table. Heart pounding, she reached out to pick it up, praying that it was Caleb texting to let her know he’d had phone issues but was fine and on his way over to Pru’s condo even now.
But the message she read on the home screen made her entire body stiffen in terror.
The chapel. Come alone, or watch your lover burn.
“They have him,” she said, then rose from the sectional so she could show the screen to Pru and Ty. Her hand shook, but their horrified trembling didn’t seem to prevent her friends from seeing the words displayed there.
Ty’s expression darkened further. “They’re using him as bait.”
“Of course they are.” The words came out bitter, laced with a helpless fury that made Delia want to throw her phone against the wall, even though the logical side of her mind knew she would never do anything so pointlessly destructive.
Instead, she set the iPhone back down on the coffee table as she said, “It’s what I would do if I were an ancient demonic entity trying to lure someone into a trap. ”
But even as she spoke, Delia thought she felt something else stirring within her — a response to the ley line energy that had been building across Las Vegas all morning.
Her psychic abilities, which had been growing stronger in fits and starts since her capture and imprisonment in Laughlin, spiked with an intensity that made her gasp and stumble backward.
Pru’s voice came to her, sounding very far away. “Delia? Are you okay?”
It was like someone had suddenly turned up the volume on a radio that had been playing at barely audible levels.
The supernatural energy of the city crashed over her in waves, each pulse bringing with it new information, new awareness of the vast network of power that crisscrossed Las Vegas like a spiderweb.
The room around her seemed to shimmer, the normal world overlaid with patterns of light and shadow that revealed the true nature of the city beneath its neon facade.
Every ley line, every intersection point, every place where supernatural power gathered — it was all visible to her now, a vast network pulsing with malevolent purpose.
And at the center of it all, Angel’s Dream Wedding Chapel blazed like a beacon of concentrated darkness, a black hole at the center of the world.
“Delia?” Pru’s voice was more urgent now, and she realized her friend had gotten up from her seat at the dining room table and paused a few feet away. “You’re…you’re glowing.”
She looked down at her hands and realized that Pru wasn’t exaggerating.
A faint luminescence surrounded her fingers, a cool blue-white light that reminded her of LED bulbs.
But this was different, because it was coming from her.
The light pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat, and she could feel it spreading up her arms with a warmth that was both comforting and terrifying.
“I can see it,” she said, and her own voice sounded strange to her ears, as if it had somehow emanated from somewhere outside her body rather than her vocal cords.
“The whole network. They’ve obviously been building this for months.
Every property the Styx Group bought, every chapel they acquired — they’re all connected. ”
She tried to focus on Pru’s and Ty’s faces, on the worry and wonder she could detect there, but the energy patterns kept intruding, overlaying her normal vision with geometric designs that made her want to squint.
She could see the flow of power moving through the building’s electrical systems, could sense the way the ley lines intersected three blocks south of here, could feel the pulse of supernatural activity radiating out from dozens of points across the valley.
It was overwhelming and beautiful.
And it was absolutely terrifying.
She wasn’t supposed to be able to do any of this.
Pru’s laptop screen flickered, displaying the map she’d put together of Las Vegas with dozens of red dots scattered across it.
But now Delia could see what the map couldn’t show — the lines of energy connecting each point, creating a massive ritual circle that encompassed the entire valley.
Not just a circle, she realized with growing horror, but a complex geometric pattern that would focus and amplify whatever energy was channeled through it.
“And Caleb’s right in the middle,” she said, the words coming out flat, weighed down with an unwelcome certainty. She could sense him now, a familiar warmth surrounded by darkness…a candle flame flickering in a hurricane.
They had to do something, or that flame might be snuffed out forever.
Ty moved closer. It seemed the strange glow that surrounded her hadn’t put him off too much, or she guessed he would have kept his distance the way Pru was doing right now, her expression that of a woman who still wasn’t quite sure what she was seeing and definitely didn’t know what to do about it.