A good thing, he supposed, or he wouldn’t have been much more than a skeleton by the time he managed to claw his way back to the mortal plane.
The demon lord moved toward the door, then paused with his hand on the handle.“Oh, and nephew?Don’t bother trying to reach out to your teammates through that charming psychic connection you share with Ms.Dunne.You’ll find it blocked.We wouldn’t want you coordinating any last-minute heroics, after all.”
Son of a bitch….
The door closed behind the demon lord with a softclick,leaving Caleb alone with his guards and the growing certainty that he was running out of time.
He reached out to his bond with Delia, knowing he needed to find out whether Vinea’s claim about blocking communications was true or whether he was merely waging more psychological warfare.The connection was still there — Caleb could sense her presence, her emotional state — but when he tried to send a focused message, he might as well have been shouting into a hurricane.The supernatural static surrounding the chapel was too intense for clear communication.
Which meant his team would be operating blind when they finally came for him.
Caleb settled back in his chair and closed his eyes, then reached out with his enhanced senses to trace the supernatural energies building around the chapel.He soon learned that the portal network was much larger than he’d initially realized, encompassing not just Las Vegas itself but stretching out into the desert in all directions.Ley lines he’d never even known existed were being activated, their combined power funneling toward this single nexus point.
But energy networks, no matter how sophisticated, were still just systems.And every system had its vulnerabilities.
The sabotage he’d been weaving into the ritual framework over the past day was designed to exploit those vulnerabilities.Small inconsistencies in the flow patterns, tiny flaws in the geometric alignments, microscopic gaps in the binding matrices that held the portals stable.
Individually, none of them would be enough to bring down the network.But if they cascaded properly, if the timing was right, then the entire structure could collapse in on itself.
The real question was whether he’d have a chance to trigger the cascade before Vinea’s ritual reached the point of no return.
The door opened again, only this time, it was one of the lesser demons who entered.It carried what looked like ceremonial robes made of some dark material that seemed to absorb light, blacker than black.
“Lord Vinea’s compliments,” the creature said in its gravelly voice.“He requests that you prepare yourself for the evening’s activities.”
Caleb looked at the robes, then at the demon, and then back at the robes.“You know,” he remarked, “when I was growing up, nobody ever mentioned that saving the world would involve so many costume changes.”
The demon stared at him with glowing red eyes that didn’t blink.“Lord Vinea expects you to be ready within the hour.”
“Wouldn’t want to keep a lord of Hell waiting,” Caleb replied as he took the robes from the creature.
Once it was relieved of its burden, the demon withdrew, leaving Caleb alone with his guards once more.He held up the ceremonial garments and examined them closely.The fabric felt wrong against his fingers, too smooth and too cold, and the symbols seemed to thrum with pure evil.
Definitely not something he’d find at Men’s Wearhouse.
But as he held the robes, an idea began to take shape in his mind.The ceremonial garments were clearly designed to channel and focus supernatural energy during the ritual…which meant they must also be part of the network he’d been sabotaging.
If he could work a few more flaws into the system….
Caleb held back a smile.The demons watching him didn’t seem to be paying any particular attention to what he was doing — he’d already gotten the impression that they weren’t exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer — and as he pulled the heavy garments on over his black button-up and jeans, his fingers worked subtle modifications into the fabric, a pinch here and a loose thread there, places where he could insert a little of his own power, drawing it out in ways he wouldn’t have even known existed a few short months ago.The changes he made were too small to be detected by casual inspection, but they would create interesting resonance patterns when the ritual energy really started flowing.
Outside his window, the sun flared out redly from behind its bank of obscuring clouds, and across Las Vegas, the shadows began to lengthen.
Soon.
ChapterFourteen
The alarmon Delia’s phone went off way too early on Saturday morning, the lilting chime she’d chosen because it was supposed to be pleasant and not too jarring doing absolutely nothing to ease the sense of dread that had settled in her stomach like a lump of undigested oatmeal.May thirtieth.Olivia’s wedding day.
She rolled over and silenced the phone, then lay there for a moment, staring at the ceiling while another wave of ley line energy washed over her.The protective walls she’d built around her consciousness the day before held firm — and because she was lying down, the rippling energy wouldn’t have affected her as badly as it might have if she’d been standing up — but she could still feel power building across the Las Vegas landscape, pressing on her ears and her temples.
If she’d been flying in a plane and had experienced similar discomfort, she could have yawned to pop her ears and regain some equilibrium.Unfortunately, the solution to this particular sensation was a lot more complicated.
And they wouldn’t arrive at that moment of relief until almost midnight.
She pushed herself out of bed and went down the hall to the kitchen, muscle memory guiding her through the familiar routine of starting coffee while her brain kept playing the day’s impossible logistics over and over again.Wedding at seven-thirty and a late reception at the Anthem Country Club afterward with both families.Vinea’s ritual scheduled to begin around eight, reaching its climax just before midnight.
And Caleb held somewhere in the supernatural maze that Angel’s Dream had become.
