Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
The interior of what had once been Angel’s Dream Wedding Chapel defied every law of physics Delia thought she understood.
The space stretched impossibly far in all directions, with walls that seemed to curve and shift the moment she looked away from them.
Gothic arches soared overhead, carved from black stone that pulsed with veins of sickly red light, while shadows moved with deliberate purpose across surfaces that seemed to crawl with oil-slick darkness.
But none of that mattered compared to the figure materializing at the center of it all.
Vinea was something that belonged in mankind’s oldest nightmares.
He stood nearly eight feet tall, all black scaly skin and burning eyes, and the dark robes he wore dragged on the floor.
“Ms. Dunne,” he said, odd, shifting tones underlying his voice and making her ears ache.
His tone sounded almost jovial. “How delightful that you chose to join us. I was beginning to think you’d lost your nerve. ”
Willing herself not to react, Delia stepped farther into the cathedral of horrors, the psychic energy flowing through her making every supernatural symbol carved into the walls flicker and pulse in response to her presence.
The protective barriers she’d built around her consciousness held firm, but she could feel the sheer wrongness of this place pressing against them like a tide of dark sludge.
“Where is he?” she demanded, surprised by how steady her voice sounded.
She knew she’d never been this frightened. Not ever, even when waking from the worst nightmares.
Maybe it was because she knew she couldn’t wake up from this.
The demon lord’s fiery eyes glittered with amusement. “Straight to the point. I do admire directness in mortals. It’s so refreshingly honest compared to the labyrinthine machinations my own kind prefer.”
Before she could even begin to think of how she should respond to that remark, he gestured toward the far end of the chapel. The air there began to shimmer, and Delia’s breath caught in her throat.
Through the rippling space, she could see a vast circular chamber carved from red desert rock under an open sky. And there, lying motionless on the cracked floor, was Caleb.
Silver flames wreathed his form, flickering weakly, as if they didn’t have enough fuel to sustain them.
His eyes were closed, his body rigid, and she could sense through their psychic bond that something was terribly wrong.
The energy signature that was uniquely his felt fractured, as if something was trying to overwrite his essential nature from within.
“As you can see, your lover has encountered some…difficulties,” Vinea continued, his tone still far too casual. “The boy tried to disrupt my work, and in the process, he drew far more power to himself than his mixed heritage could safely contain. The transformation has begun.”
The transformation. The thing Caleb feared most — his demon blood overwhelming his humanity, taking away everything that made him who he was.
“What did you do to him?” The words came out sharp as the crack of a whip, and she watched Vinea’s smile widen in response to her obvious fury.
“I did nothing,” the demon lord said, and the worst part was that she could sense he was telling the truth.
“He did this to himself. In his desperation to sabotage the ritual and protect you, he accessed power sources beyond his capacity to control. Now the demonic essence is consuming what remains of his human soul.”
Through their psychic bond, Delia could feel Caleb’s consciousness flickering like a guttering candle.
He was still in there, still fighting, but the transformation was pulling him deeper with each passing moment.
Soon there would be nothing left but demon, and the man she loved would be gone forever.
“I have to reach him,” she said, and took a step toward the shimmering portal.
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Vinea replied as he moved to block her path. “The ritual chamber is collapsing due to your lover’s interference. Even if you could reach him, you’d both be crushed when the pocket dimension implodes.”
Another wave of ley line power flooded through the city, and Delia felt it flow through her as well, its wild, sparking energy reminding her of downed electrical lines.
Instead of fighting the sensation, she embraced it, drawing strength from every psychically sensitive person in Las Vegas, from every connection of love and loyalty and pure grit that bound the city’s residents together.
“You’re not stopping me,” she said, and this time her voice resonated with determined undertones that made the carved symbols on the walls flicker uncertainly.
Vinea’s unearthly features shifted from amusement to genuine interest. Or at least, she thought that might be the cause of that flare of red in his flame-hued eyes.
“Fascinating. The reports of your growing abilities were accurate, it seems. But raw power without training is like a loaded gun in the hands of a child — dangerous to everyone, especially the wielder.”
The demon lord raised one clawed hand, and the air around Delia thickened, pressing against her from all sides like invisible quicksand. She tried to move and found her limbs responding sluggishly, as if she was trying to run underwater.
But the psychic energy flowing through her reacted to the attack, automatically creating barriers of compressed will and determination. The crushing pressure lessened, then disappeared entirely as she pushed back against the demon lord’s assault.
“Interesting,” Vinea murmured, genuine surprise flickering across his inhuman features. “Raw talent combined with instinctive defense mechanisms. You really are quite remarkable.”
“Thanks,” Delia said dryly, even as she reached out with her newfound abilities. The ley line network responded to her will like an extension of her nervous system, power flowing wherever she directed it. “I’ve always been kind of an overachiever.”
The demon lord’s laughter echoed strangely in the transformed space. “Confidence in the face of overwhelming odds. Another admirable human trait. But I’m afraid enthusiasm is no substitute for experience.”
This time, when Vinea attacked, it wasn’t with supernatural pressure, but something far more insidious.
Tendrils of darkness reached out from the walls, wrapping around her arms and legs like living chains.
The moment they touched her skin, they began to drain away the psychic energy she’d been accumulating, siphoning her power into the chapel’s twisted architecture, making it even stronger, even stranger.
Panic flared as she realized her abilities were being systematically stripped away.
The protective barriers around her consciousness wavered, and suddenly she could sense the full horror of what Vinea had created here — not just a ritual site, but a vast machine designed to harvest and process human suffering on an enormous scale.
Focus, she told herself, forcing down the terror that threatened to overwhelm her rational mind. You’re not helpless. You’ve already come farther than you ever thought you could. But you need to fight on your own terms…not his.
Instead of trying to break free from the draining tendrils, Delia stopped fighting them entirely, letting herself go still and calm.
The darkness rushed into her, clearly expecting to find a helpless victim.
Instead, it encountered something it wasn’t prepared for — the combined love and determination of all the people she was fighting to protect.
Her parents, safe at the wedding reception. Olivia and Alec, now married and beginning their new life together. Caleb, trapped in transformation but still alive, still fighting. Pru and Ty, racing across the city to mount a rescue that might already be too late.
The darkness that had been draining her energy found itself overwhelmed by something it couldn’t process or contain.
Love was a force that connected everything in the universe, that underlaid everything ever imagined or felt, everything ever created or shared.
And when that energy was focused and directed by someone with the will and the desperation to wield it… .
The tendrils holding her burst into white flames that made the demon lord stumble backward, his unnatural features twisted with actual pain as the light seared his unholy form.
“Impossible,” he snarled, his composure finally cracking. “You’re nothing more than a human. You don’t have access to that kind of power.”
“You’re right,” Delia said as she stepped forward, white light beginning to radiate from her skin in pulses that matched her heartbeat. “I don’t. But they do.”
She gestured around them, and at once, the chapel was filled with the presence of everyone in Las Vegas who’d ever fought to protect something they loved.
Not physically — she wasn’t summoning ghosts or spirits — but their combined will, their shared determination to stand against a darkness that threatened everything they cared about.
The demon lord’s burning eyes widened as he seemed to realize what Delia had just summoned. “A lattice. You’ve created a psychic lattice.”
“I didn’t create anything,” Delia corrected him, even as she focused on drawing still more power from the connections that bound the city together.
If someone had asked, she couldn’t even have said how she was doing any of this.
It had come to her out of pure instinct, like knowing how to breathe.
“I just realized I could use what was already there.”
Vinea raised both hands, dark energy crackling between his claws. “Clever. But cleverness alone won’t save you from what’s coming.”