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.”
That was what Caleb had been afraid of.He’d spent two years in that place, and while most of his time had been devoted to survival rather than demon politics, he’d learned enough about the power structures there to know that the really dangerous entities rarely bothered with the mortal plane unless they had something specific in mind.
Something like revenge.
“Any idea which lord they’re trying to summon?”he asked, already guessing that the answer was going to make his day significantly worse.
Pru clicked through several screens on her laptop, bringing up what looked like occult diagrams and arcane symbols.Maybe she’d started out investigating cheating spouses and people lying about their workmen’s comp cases, but it seemed as if she’d slid into the whole supernatural milieu pretty easily.Then again, research skills were research skills.
“Based on the geometric patterns and the timing of the incidents, there are three possibilities,” she said.“Malphas, Marchosias, or — ”
“Vinea,” Caleb broke in, his voice flat.
“Who’s that?”Delia asked.
Right.Most people didn’t know anything about the hierarchy of Hell, beyond the obvious suspects like Beelzebub or Asmodeus or even Belial, the demon lord who’d had the most effect on Caleb’s life.
But, thank God and all the choirs of angels, Belial was now dead, not just banished.
However, that didn’t mean they didn’t have plenty of remaining evil entities to deal with.
“Vinea is an earl of Hell who can build towers, demolish walls, and make waters rough,” Ty replied.“He often appears as a lion riding a black horse while holding a viper…although I assume he’ll probably try to maintain a lower profile while here on the mortal plane.”
“And he’s no one to mess with,” Caleb added.“He gets his jollies destroying the works of man, so it’s not too much of a stretch to guess he’s behind the destruction in the city this morning.”
“Do you think he’s trying to get back at you specifically?”Delia said.She inched even closer, and he got the impression she also wished he could take her in his arms and provide some much-needed reassurance, however spurious it might be.
“Maybe.”He pushed a hand through his already disheveled hair as he tried to work his way through the possibilities.Even though he was part demon, the motivations of the higher-level demons were often pretty murky to him.“Or maybe he’s just tired of being stuck in Hell and sees Las Vegas as a convenient entry point.”
“Either way,” Ty said, apparently deciding they’d wasted enough time on ancient history, “we need to disrupt the ritual before they can complete it.The question is how.”
Pru pulled up another screen, this one showing a timeline of the morning’s incidents.“If the pattern holds, they’ll need to hit at least twelve more locations before the circle is complete.Based on the current rate of attacks, that gives us maybe six hours.”
