The front door of Angel’s Dream stood open, revealing an interior that definitely hadn’t existed when she and Caleb had first visited the chapel.Beyond the threshold lay a vast space that seemed to stretch much farther than the building’s exterior dimensions should have allowed, filled with malevolent shadows.
Delia pulled in a deep breath.
Hang on, Caleb,she thought.
I’m coming for you.
ChapterFifteen
The ceremonial robesfelt heavier with each step as the demons escorted Caleb through corridors that definitely hadn’t existed when Angel’s Dream was just a simple wedding chapel.The walls around him pulsed with a life of their own, black stone veined with lines of sickly red light that glowed like sullen magma, marble carved from the depths of Hell.Every so often, the architecture would shift slightly, angles rearranging themselves in ways that made his inner ear protest and his stomach lurch.
He’d been walking for what felt like hours, although Caleb suspected time moved differently in whatever pocket dimension Vinea had carved out of reality.The demon lord himself had vanished after delivering his final threats, leaving Caleb in the custody of six lesser demons who radiated the kind of casual menace that told him they’d be all too thrilled if he gave them an excuse to get violent.
Not that he was planning to.
Not yet, anyway.
The sabotage he’d sown in the ritual framework over the past day was still in place, tiny flaws and instabilities that would hopefully blossom into something much larger when the time came.But triggering those failsafes would require perfect timing, and Caleb still wasn’t entirely sure when that moment would arrive.
His psychic bond with Delia had strengthened briefly during what he assumed was Olivia’s wedding ceremony, a burst of warmth and love and resolve that had made his eyes burn with tears he didn’t dare shed.She was alive, she was fighting, and somehow, she’d managed to tap into power sources he hadn’t even known existed.That brief connection had also told him something else — she was planning something desperate, something that would put her directly in harm’s way.
Be careful,he thought, projecting the mental message toward wherever she was, even though he knew she probably couldn’t hear him through the supernatural static that filled the air around and under Angel’s Dream.I can’t lose you.
“Move faster,” one of his guards growled at him, its voice a grind of metal over stone.The thing looked vaguely humanoid, but its skin had the texture of charcoal, and its eyes reminded him of embers glowing in a dying fire.“Lord Vinea grows impatient.”
As much as Caleb would have liked to tell the demon what his lordship could do with his impatience, instead he picked up his pace, even though the heavy ceremonial robes made it difficult to move quickly.The fabric absorbed light, creating the illusion that he was wearing a hole cut out of reality itself.Symbols worked into the weave shivered at the edge of his peripheral vision and seemed to disappear if he tried to look at them directly, but he’d managed to introduce several subtle modifications into the garment’s mystical circuitry.When the ritual energy really started flowing, those little alterations should create some interesting resonance patterns.
Assuming, of course, that he lived long enough to see them activated.
The corridor ended abruptly at a set of massive double doors carved from black stone with an oil-slick surface, possibly obsidian.As they approached, the doors swung open without any visible mechanism, revealing a chamber beyond that made Caleb’s breath catch in his throat.
They weren’t in Angel’s Dream anymore.Hell, they weren’t even in Las Vegas.
The space that stretched out before him was vast and circular, carved directly into living red rock under an open desert sky.Stars wheeled overhead, and the air tasted of sage and dust and something else — something old and powerful that made his demon blood respond with unwelcome heat.
“Welcome to the true heart of the operation,” Vinea said as he materialized from the shadows at the edge of the circle.The demon lord had abandoned his human guise again, and he wore dark robes similar to Caleb’s, although they didn’t do nearly enough to conceal his reptilian form.He offered his captive a smile full of razor-sharp teeth.“I trust the journey wasn’t too arduous?”
Caleb forced himself to survey his surroundings with what he hoped looked like casual interest rather than growing horror.The circular space was easily a hundred feet across and had intricate symbols carved into every surface.But it wasn’t the arcane geometry that made his skin crawl.
No, it was the physical evidence of how long this place must have been in use.
The rock walls were stained with what could only be centuries of accumulated blood.Bones had been embedded in the stone itself, as if previous sacrifices had been absorbed into the very structure of the chamber.And at the center of it all stood an altar that looked like it had been hewn from a single massive meteorite, its surface polished smooth by ages of use.
“This is where it all began,” Vinea continued, beginning a slow transit of the chamber’s perimeter, his black robes dragging on the equally ebony-hued stone floor.“Long before humans learned to build cities or write their little stories, this place was already ancient.The first demons to walk this plane used it as an anchor point, a way to stabilize their presence in this reality.”
The history lesson was interesting, but Caleb was more focused on figuring out the chamber’s supernatural defenses.The ley lines that had crisscrossed Las Vegas now seemed to converge here rather than at Angel’s Dream, and he wondered how Vinea — or those he was working with — had managed to make it seem as if the wedding chapel had been their only focus.
Something he’d have to worry about later, though, since this convergence of currents had created a nexus of power that made the air shimmer with barely contained energy.But more than that, he could sense other presences somehow near…entities that felt old beyond measure, things that had been sleeping in the deep places of the earth and were now beginning to stir.
“I thought you said you’d only been planning this for the past few years,” Caleb said, still trying to project an air of reluctant cooperation.Anything to make the demon lord think he was still on board with his hideous plans.
Also, he was curious.This chamber had been here for eons, not just a couple of years.
“Planning?”Vinea’s laugh echoed strangely in the circular chamber.“My dear nephew, this was never aboutplanning.This was about waiting for the ideal confluence of energies that would allow us to finally complete what was begun millennia ago.”
The demon lord gestured toward the altar, and Caleb noticed for the first time that channels had been carved into its surface — channels that led to a complex network of grooves cut into the chamber floor, all of them leading toward points around the circle’s perimeter where other, smaller altars stood.Seven of them, he counted, each one positioned at what had to be a critical node in the chamber’s mystical architecture.
“Your blood will flow through these channels,” Vinea explained casually.“Each drop will carry a piece of your essence, your connection to both planes, your ability to serve as a bridge between the mortal realm and the domains below.As the life drains from your body, the portals will stabilize, creating permanent gateways that can never be closed.”
