“I’m good, thanks,” she said aloud, just in case her captor was eavesdropping on her. She’d checked the room for any hidden cameras…Pru had taught her how to do that a while back after she’d talked about getting an Airbnb in Tahoe for a long weekend at a time when horror stories about secret cameras in vacation rentals had been making the rounds on the internet…but as far as Delia had been able to tell, the place was clean.
Then again, a demon or whoever her captor might be probably was someone who didn’t have to rely on something as mundane as spy cameras.
Trying not to inhale too deeply — she knew the scent of the French dip would linger in the air for a while, even with the cover in place — she headed back over to the bed, picked up the remote, and turned HGTV back on.
Caleb and Ty sent themselves back into the sublevel and to the same stairwell they’d used to descend to the room that had once held Delia. They’d agreed on that location because they both knew it well enough, and also because the stairs had seemed pretty much deserted, and they didn’t think there was too high a risk of bumping into any Aquarius employees there.
That appeared to be the case now as well, since Caleb didn’t see anyone around when he and Ty appeared.
“All the way down to the bottom?” he asked, and Ty nodded.
“Yes. Any tunnels would have to branch off from the lowest level.”
They kept heading down, past the landing that would have allowed them access to Sublevel 3, and then past Sublevel 4, until the stairwell terminated at a final landing that opened onto the lowest level of the underground facilities.
Even though it looked exactly the same as the level where they’d found Aaron guarding Delia’s erstwhile prison, something about the place gave Caleb the creeps. He glanced over at Ty, who nodded.
“Yes, I feel it, too. It’s not quite the same energy as the portal near Alba Sanchez’s house, but it’s similar. I think we must be getting close.”
“Where do you think Sellers would have hidden the tunnel?” Caleb asked. “Walls…or floor?”
“It could be either,” Ty said. “But let’s walk the perimeter first, and then if we have to, we’ll start searching all the different hallways.”
Which could take a while. Then again, they had almost six hours until night fell, so it wasn’t as if there wasn’t plenty of time available for exploring.
Even though every passing minute felt like a century.
By unspoken agreement, they both headed to the right, moving slowly so they could absorb the energies of the space. That was what would betray the location of the tunnel or passageway, not any visible evidence. August Sellers would have made sure that the ordinary employees who came down here wouldn’t find anything of note…well, unless they were psychic or something.
The whole time, Caleb could sense the way the portal’s energies pulsed in the background, although they weren’t slow and steady, but rather had an odd, almost staccato beat, as if their natural rhythm had been perverted somehow.
No big surprise, not when Sellers must have been meddling with those energy signatures to make them more suited for opening a gateway into Hell.
“Will it go back to normal after all this is over?” Caleb asked Ty in an undertone. It sure didn’t seem as if anyone was observing them, and of course, Ty would be interfering with the security cameras to make sure there was no trace of their passage, but it still seemed wise to keep their voices down.
“I hope so,” the half angel replied, also speaking in a near-murmur. “I haven’t encountered anything like this before, so I can’t say for sure.”
While Caleb would have preferred a more definitive answer, at least Ty hadn’t said that the portal would be damaged forever. Maybe the river’s energies weren’t in sync with his demonic blood, but the Colorado was still a source of natural beauty and vitality, and he would have hated to think it was permanently defiled by the demon’s meddling.
They fell into silence again as they continued their circuit. This wasn’t really the time for small talk, so even though the quiet felt a little uncomfortable, Caleb didn’t try to come up with a topic that might have kept the conversation going.
The wrongness in the background seemed to strengthen, that odd rhythm beginning to feel like the whining buzz of a fly trapped in a room, drilling into his eardrums. If their mission hadn’t been so urgent, he would have been tempted to tell Ty that they needed to get the hell out of there.
Of course, he didn’t.
Then the half angel stopped suddenly and pointed at the floor beneath their feet. “Here,” he said.
“You’re sure?” Caleb asked. As far as he could tell, this particular section of industrial carpet didn’t look any different from the rest of the sublevel they’d already surveyed.
“It feels wrong.”
Caleb couldn’t help lifting an eyebrow. “Dude, this whole place feels wrong.”
Ty gave a reluctant chuckle. “Okay, you’re right about that. But the wrongness feels concentrated here.”
He knelt and spread his hands over the section of carpet he’d indicated. A faint glow surrounded his fingers, not nearly as bright as the illumination he’d called to himself in the chamber where they’d found the map.
However, it appeared to be effective enough, because the outline of a square about a yard on each side began to glow in response.
