The moment their powers merged, reality shuddered.
The walls of Angel’s Dream began to crack, competing forces tearing at the pocket dimension Vinea had created.Through the portal, Delia could see the ritual chamber collapsing, ancient stones crumbling as Caleb’s sabotage finally reached its full effect.
“No!”The demon lord’s roar shook the entire structure, but his voice was weaker now.“You cannot disrupt work that will take centuries to repair!”
“Watch us,” Delia said, and poured everything she had into her psychic link with Caleb.
It was like creating some kind of supernatural feedback loop.The power Vinea had been accumulating for his ritual suddenly had nowhere to go as Caleb’s sabotage cascaded through the network.Energy that should have opened permanent gateways to Hell instead began to collapse back on itself, creating a chain reaction that spread across the entire Las Vegas valley.
Through her strange new senses, Delia could see the demon lord’s carefully constructed network failing node by node.Wedding chapels and event venues across the city suddenly found their supernatural infestations simply…gone.The ley line energy that had been building toward critical mass began to dissipate, flowing back into natural patterns that had existed for millennia.
But Vinea wasn’t finished.As his grand design crumbled around him, the demon lord gathered his remaining power for one final assault — not against Delia or the lattice she’d been using to bolster her strength, but against the pocket dimension itself.
“If I cannot have this plane,” he snarled, his form beginning to blur and shift as reality bent around him, “then I’ll make sure you lose everything as well.”
The walls of the chapel began to collapse inward as Vinea tried to fold the entire space in on itself.
Delia sensed Caleb’s flash of alarm, followed immediately by his desperate attempt to break free from the transformation that held him.But he was still too far away, still too consumed by the changes ravaging his body.
That was when the front door of the chapel exploded inward in a shower of splinters and light as bright as an atomic blast.
Ty burst through the opening with brilliant white light blazing around him like armor, and when he spread his arms, silver flames erupted from his fingertips to race along the chapel’s walls, stabilizing the collapsing dimensional structure.
“Delia!”His voice traveled across the chaos as Pru appeared behind him, her laptop bag slung over her shoulder.“Go to him!We’ll hold this place together!”
Delia thought she understood what Ty meant.The meteorite altar where Caleb lay wasn’t just a focus for the ritual — it was the physical anchor that allowed Vinea’s pocket dimension to exist.If she could reach Caleb, if she could use their combined power to disrupt the anchor….
The demon lord realized the same thing.With a roar of rage, Vinea launched himself toward the dimensional gateway that showed the ritual chamber, clawed hands reaching forward.
Delia didn’t think.She simply moved, drawing on every ounce of power she could access and hurling herself through the shimmering portal after him.
The transition was nauseating, like being turned inside out while riding a roller coaster through a blender.But then she was there, in the vast circular chamber where the real ritual had been taking place, and she could see Caleb clearly for the first time since this nightmare began.
He was alive, but changed.Silver flames wreathed his form, and when his eyes snapped open at her arrival, they blazed with a terrible light that made her think of volcanic glass — beautiful and dangerous and not at all human.The ceremonial robes he wore had burned away completely, leaving him surrounded by a corona of supernatural fire.
But Vinea was there, too, his massive form bearing down on Caleb with murderous intent.
“Stay away from him!”Delia shouted, and white light erupted from her hands to strike the demon lord square in the chest.
The impact sent Vinea staggering backward, black ichor spilling from the wounds she’d just inflicted.Even injured and weakened, though, the ancient being was still a lord of Hell.
“Two for the price of one,” Vinea panted, his terrible red gaze fixed on both of them now, his reptilian features twisted with pain and rage.“How convenient.I can drain you both and still have enough energy to complete the ritual.”
The demon lord raised his hands, and darkness began to pour from the carved symbols that covered the chamber walls.This wasn’t the mere absence of light, but something actively malevolent that devoured hope and love and everything good in the world.
It washed over Delia in a tide of despair, threatening to drown everything she was in an ocean of suffering.But then Caleb’s hand closed around hers — his skin fever-hot but solid, real, somehow still him despite the transformation — and their combined power flared outward like a star being born.
“Together,” he said, and his voice was different, deeper, with harmonics that made the very air seem to vibrate.But underneath the otherworldly intonation, she could still hear the man she loved.“Just like you said.”
They stood in the maelstrom, their fingers intertwined, facing down a wounded but still dangerous lord of Hell with nothing to aid them but their love for each other and their refusal to let the darkness win.
It should have been suicide.
And yet….
The power that flowed between them was something that existed at the very core of reality itself — the force that bound atoms together, that lit the stars, that connected every living thing in an invisible web of shared existence.
Vinea’s ferocious attack smashed into that combined radiance and simply…stopped.The darkness that should have consumed them found itself unable to comprehend what it was facing.Love was a law of physics, as basic as gravity or electromagnetism.
