The devil went down to l.., p.24
The Devil Went Down to Laughlin, page 24
part #1 of Vegas Slayers - Book 3 Series
Especially since all manner of shit had gone down the last time they were separated.
“Okay,” Ty said. “But we need to be in and out as quickly as possible.”
Caleb was all for that. Although he didn’t expect that Sellers would be able to claw his way back to this plane any time soon — or maybe ever — he also didn’t want to deal with some over-zealous security guard coming along to investigate any movement in an office that should have been empty at that hour of the night.
“No worries.”
Delia came over to him and calmly looped her arms around his waist. “Ready when you are,” she said.
He couldn’t allow himself to react to her, except for a nod to show he’d acknowledged her comment. A few feet away, Pru approached Ty almost timidly, although he seemed matter-of-fact enough as he put his arms around her and said, “This will be quick, but you still need to hang on.”
A second later, the four of them materialized in front of the big walnut desk. Because the windows didn’t appear to have any coverings, enough illumination from the lights of Laughlin streamed in to make the rest of the room visible enough. The photo Pru had found online hadn’t shown the sitting area off to one side, with a leather couch and two matching chairs and a coffee table of what looked like hammered copper, but it was far enough away that it hadn’t interfered with their arrival.
At once, Pru stepped away from Ty and hurried over to the desk. She had her head down, and Caleb wondered if she was blushing, or trying to conceal something about her reaction to the way the half angel had held her a moment earlier.
Hard to say. Although you could walk around in here without having to turn on the lights, some of the finer details were lost.
Caleb was glad of that, though, just because now there was probably a lower chance of anyone noticing they were even here.
He noticed Pru hadn’t started working on the computer yet, but instead was opening the desk drawers and hunting around inside. Meanwhile, Delia and Ty stood behind her, looking awkward.
Well, they all knew that Prudence was the one who’d have to do the heavy lifting here.
“You think Sellers left a file in there with all the info about his demon friends?” he asked dryly.
Her mouth tightened in irritation. “No,” she replied. “But, like I’ve tried to explain about a million times by now, I’m not a computer hacker. If I sit down and try to brute-force my way into the jerk’s computer, I’ll get locked out — and probably set off an alarm somewhere. This may not be the Pentagon or something, but I’ve learned that these casino types have plenty of safeguards built into their systems.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Trying to see if he taped his password somewhere,” Pru said, her response somewhat muffled because she’d gotten down on her hands and knees and was feeling around under the desk. “You’d be surprised how many executive types do that. It’s like they carry so many numbers around in their head that they can’t be arsed to remember a password.”
Maybe, but….
“You do remember that we’re dealing with a demon here, and not some C-suite bozo with a degree from Wharton,” Caleb pointed out.
“Doesn’t matter. Sellers was a real person once, right? And the demon inside him took over at some point?”
That appeared to be the case. Sometimes demons managed to slither their way onto this plane without possessing anyone, but that didn’t happen nearly as often as them simply taking up residence and then doing their best to hang on to their mortal shells, like some kind of diabolical hermit crab.
“I suppose so.”
“She could be right,” Ty put in. “Even demons can’t completely override twenty years of bad human habits.”
“And…got it!” Pru pushed her way out from under the desk, holding a yellow sticky note with tape on two sides, as if whoever had placed it down there had been worried that the original adhesive from the Post-It wouldn’t be up to the task. “Jerk thought he was being cagey by taping it to the rear of the desk drawer instead of underneath, but it was there. Now let’s see what’s in this bad boy.”
She settled herself in the oversized chair, looking very small and as if she had ended up sitting there because it was “bring your daughter to work” day.
Not that demons had daughters. At least, not that Caleb had ever heard of.
Delia and Ty moved closer, although they hung far enough back that they couldn’t be accused of crowding Prudence too closely. She didn’t look up, but instead typed a combination of letters and numbers and symbols on the login screen before her.
At once, the login disappeared and was replaced by pure black across all three screens.
“Cheerful,” she commented. “Some people like something a little more colorful for their desktops, but I suppose demons don’t go for that sort of thing.”
There was still some kind of menu bar along the top, and Pru clicked on it and opened the file explorer. Caleb had always been a Mac guy, so he’d be the first to admit he didn’t really know much about how Windows worked. Luckily, Prudence seemed to know what she was doing, because she opened a window that appeared to show all the files on the hard drive.
Leaning forward, she stared intently at the screen. Just a moment later, she said, “Gotcha.”
“What did you find?”
“Oh, just a little folder labeled ‘Styx.’”
“What?” Delia asked, moving forward. Her face was still pale, but she otherwise seemed recovered from her recent ordeal.
Caleb wished he could reach out to take her hand, but he wasn’t sure how she would receive such a gesture. Instead, he retreated to his usual safe sarcasm and said, “You’re really surprised there’s a connection between our friends in California and August Sellers?”
“I guess I am,” she said. “Especially since you just told us that demons aren’t usually linked.”
“Linked psychically,” he reminded her. “I never said some of them couldn’t be working together.”
Ty ignored all this and asked, “What’s in the folder?”
Pru clicked on it. Inside were a bunch of files with numbers for their names. However, their subjects were clear enough — photo after photo of Delia, one of them obviously the professional headshot from the Dunne & Dunne website, but much more what appeared to be random snaps taken on the street, or in various places around town, whether they were of Delia emerging from Trader Joe’s with a laden shopping cart or her picking up her dry cleaning…or pulling into the garage of her home.
“He was tailing me?” she demanded.
“I doubt he would’ve gotten his hands dirty like that,” Pru responded. “I’m sure he just hired someone to follow you.”
“Oh, that makes me feel so much better.”
However, her tone was wry enough that Caleb could tell she was beginning to recover from the shock of seeing all those photos of herself.
The folder wasn’t all about Delia, though. There were also images of Alba Sanchez’s house and even a few of Aaron himself.
“Looks like Mr. Sellers had been planning this for a while,” Ty commented. “He was just waiting for all the pieces to line up.”
Caleb didn’t like the sound of that very much. “Even before that mess at the Desert Paradise?”
“Maybe,” Pru said as she studied the files on the screen in front of her. “Some of these are dated back to the end of February, which would definitely have been before the poker tournament.”
Delia had crossed her arms, almost as if she was hugging herself. The black top she’d borrowed from Prudence didn’t have any sleeves, and the A/C in the office was turned up pretty high, but Caleb didn’t think that was the real reason.
“So…was the ritual at the river sort of a backup plan?”
Of course. He didn’t know why he hadn’t seen it before, but then, it was kind of hard to detect a pattern when you only had one data point to work with.
“That’s exactly it,” he replied. “And it’s what Hank Bowers and the rest of those possessed goons at the tournament were trying to accomplish. They wanted to open a gate to Hell with all the energies they were summoning, and when that fell apart, it was time for Sellers to step in and see if he could seal the deal.”
“Those are some very determined demons,” Ty said, and Caleb shrugged.
“If you’d ever been to Hell, you’d know why they want to get out of there so badly.”
Delia glanced away from the computer screen at the lights of Laughlin, glittering across the surface of the river. It didn’t seem as if the earth tremor they’d felt as the portal closed had traveled up through all those sublevels, because as far as he could tell, everything looked serene out there, thousands of mortals gambling and laughing and drinking and having absolutely no idea how close they’d come to utter destruction.
“But we beat them,” she said, her voice firm.
“Yes,” Caleb replied, “we beat them…this time.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Delia and Pru drove back to Las Vegas in Delia’s Hyundai SUV, while Caleb followed behind in his big Range Rover. She wondered briefly why he hadn’t taken his Mercedes, since it surely got better gas mileage, and then guessed he’d driven the bigger vehicle because he had passengers riding with him.
Ty, on the other hand, had said that it looked as if their work was done — for now, at least — and had promptly vanished. It was a handy way of getting around when you didn’t have to worry about luggage.
But Caleb and Delia had needed to go back to Harrah’s and pack up their things, among which were, miraculously, Delia’s missing purse and sandals.
“Where on earth did you find these?” she asked. She wanted to hug the purse, with all of its necessities of life, like her ID and cell phone and favorite MAC lipstick, but settled for slipping it over her shoulder.
“In the room where Sellers was holding you,” Caleb told her.
She stared at him, shocked. “You found it?”
“We did,” Pru put in. “But you were already gone. We figured we’d take your stuff so we could give it back when we caught up with you.”
Back when that had happened, they’d probably been thinking more in terms of “if” rather than “when.” But they had found her, against all odds, and now they were headed back to Las Vegas.
Headed home.
Pru was behind the wheel, though, because she told Delia that after everything she’d been through, she shouldn’t have to drive another hundred miles. And while Delia had thought of protesting, she realized her friend was right.
Now she sat in the passenger seat and watched the dark desert flashing by outside the car windows. Part of her wished she could be with Caleb, but that was silly. This was her car, and that meant she needed to ride with Pru.
“Do you want me to stay with you tonight?” Prudence asked. They’d just passed a milepost that let them know Las Vegas was still fifty miles away, but Delia felt better with every minute that put Laughlin behind them.
She had a feeling it would be a long time before she went back.
Maybe never.
“I mean, you’ve been through a lot,” Pru continued. “I think it might be better if you weren’t alone tonight. I already have a toothbrush and a change of clothes with me, so it wouldn’t be a big deal.”
Although Delia was touched by the offer, she also knew she wanted to be alone.
Or rather, if she couldn’t have Caleb there to keep her company, she’d rather be by herself…if merely to suss out why she thought his presence would be so much more comforting to her. An impartial observer would have probably commented that Caleb Lockwood wasn’t the most soothing presence in the world.
However, Delia knew she was far from impartial when it came to Caleb.
“No, I’m fine,” she said, and hoped she didn’t sound — or look — as exhausted as she felt. “Honestly, I just want to go to bed and sleep for about a hundred years. I won’t be very good company.”
Pru redirected her attention from the road just long enough to give her friend a sharp look. “This isn’t about hanging out and braiding each other’s hair. I just think it’s better if you’re not alone tonight.”
Once upon a time, Delia might have agreed with her. But the last few days had made a few uncomfortable thoughts bubble up in her mind, and she knew she needed time to sit down and sort them out. Having Pru hovering around and making sure everything was all right wouldn’t help with that process at all.
“No, I’m really okay,” she said firmly. “But I promise I’ll call you if I start to feel hinky, and I’ll text first thing in the morning to let you know I made it through the night just fine.”
Pru’s lips parted, and Delia worried that she was going to keep pushing the issue. To her relief, her friend shut her mouth again just a second later, as if she’d realized that it didn’t matter what she said, that Delia had decided on a course of action and wouldn’t budge.
“All right,” she said at length, and her mouth twisted in a lopsided smile. “But don’t bother with that early morning text. You know I won’t see it.”
Delia smiled in response. They wouldn’t be getting into Las Vegas too late — a little before eleven, if her mental calculations were correct — and yet she had a feeling Pru would still find a reason to stay up for a few more hours after that and would want to get back into her usual routine of sleeping until at least ten in the morning, maybe later.
“Then I won’t. Anyway, everything’s going to be fine.”
Or at least, fine for this short breathing space. She couldn’t quite forget that remark of Caleb’s, the one where he’d said they’d won for now. He hadn’t added to the comment; he hadn’t needed to.
They might have beaten August Sellers, but whoever was behind the Styx Group was still out there, watching and waiting.
And planning, no doubt.
Was the man she’d seen in her dream connected to them somehow?
It was just a dream, she reminded herself, even though she knew that reality wasn’t what it had been a few months ago, that dreams and visions could be just as real as the actual, tangible things she could reach out and touch.
But Pru didn’t know about the dream. She only knew that they’d defeated the current baddie and therefore had earned some time off.
So she didn’t dispute Delia’s statement and seemed content to be quiet as they drove the rest of the way into Las Vegas. And because Pru had told her during the drive that they’d covered for her as best they could, letting her mother know that urgent business in Laughlin might keep her occupied until Friday, Delia knew she could take tomorrow off to recover. She thought she’d probably putter around the house, maybe go to TJ’s and get her favorite comfort foods, like that awesome Greek pastry stuffed with cheese. It didn’t land in her shopping cart too often because it was an unholy collision of carbs and fats, but she figured she’d earned it.
As Prudence pulled into the garage at Delia’s house, though, she said, “Are you absolutely sure you don’t want me to stay?”
“Absolutely,” Delia replied. “But you’ll still need to come inside to wait for your Uber.”
Because Pru had told her she’d taken one over to Caleb’s place, figuring it would probably be better not to leave her car parked on the street there for a period of unknown duration. None of them had known how long the rescue operation was going to take.
Hard to believe she’d driven down to Laughlin only yesterday afternoon. It felt as if she’d been away for a hundred years.
They got out of the Hyundai and headed inside. Delia had left on one of the can lights in the kitchen, figuring she didn’t want the place to be pitch dark when she got home, although she flicked on some others as they headed into the living room.
Everything looked utterly the same, but the house still didn’t feel quite right, as if something fundamental about it had changed.
She knew that wasn’t the problem, though. It wasn’t the house that had suffered a shift at its very core.
No, that would be her.
Pru pulled out her phone and checked the app. “Only two minutes away.”
She’d had Delia make the reservation as they were driving in so she wouldn’t have to wait too long for the car to arrive. The timing seemed to be working out just perfectly.
“Thank you for, well” — Delia waved a hand in a direction she hoped was southward — “everything.”
Pru’s shoulders lifted a fraction. Not because she wasn’t unmoved by Delia’s gratitude, but more because she’d never been all that good at accepting thanks or praise.
“It’s what friends do. I know you would have done the same for me.”
Yes, she would have, without hesitation.
“Still — ”
Pru’s cell phone pinged right then, and she looked down at the screen. “Ride’s here. I’ll text you tomorrow after I get up, just to check in.”
“Sounds good. I’m pretty sure the most exciting thing I’ll do tomorrow is head out to TJ’s at some point.”
Pru grinned, surprised Delia a little by giving her a quick, fierce hug, and then picked up her satchel and her Kohl’s bag of clothing and headed for the door. One final wave, and then she was gone.
The house felt strangely empty after she left, even though Delia was certainly used to being here by herself. She pulled in a breath, then went over and sprinkled some fish food into the tank. They all swam to the surface, mouths hungrily open, and a pang of guilt went through her.
No, it wasn’t her fault that she hadn’t been here to feed them, but the fish didn’t know that.
Luckily, it didn’t seem as if they’d suffered any irreparable harm by missing their feedings over the past day and a half, and once that was taken care of, she went into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water. Thanks to the way Caleb and the gang had retrieved her purse from the room where she’d been imprisoned, she still had her phone and everything else, thank God.
