"yes!" adam said.

i heard shouts and looked down the aisle to see a line of minders heading our way, their tentacles waving eagerly, hungry to feed on our thoughts while the arch operators recoiled with horror.

"go, dammit!" shelton said, pushing me.

i stumbled through. the world warped, snapped back into place, and i stood feet away from the omniarch beneath the mansion, the image of the room in the templar house still visible through it since we'd never closed the connection. everyone else entered right on my heels. my phone dinged. i looked to see a text message from christian.

the obsidian arch is shut down. the darkwater people will be stuck at the la casona way station for as long as i can manage.

"we did it!" i said.

"thank god," shelton said, taking a step toward the room exit. an invisible force seemed to push him back. the air around us warped and bent like a bubble.

disconnect, i thought to the portal we'd just come through. the image of the control room at la casona flickered away, but a shimmering portal remained. jagged bolts of energy flashed between the gateway behind us and the mansion's omniarch.

"close the other portal," shelton said. "they're reacting off each other!"

"i'm trying!" i willed the portal we'd just used closed again. energy arced, popping and crackling off an invisible barrier around us. i tried to deactivate the mansion omniarch. the image between the columns flickered to a silvery sheen. with a loud pop, the two portals suddenly shut down. the bubble of energy around us warped into an oblong shape and snapped back into a sphere. the world flickered.

we stood in utter darkness even my supernatural sight couldn't penetrate. freezing cold stabbed into my lungs. i heard someone suck in a harsh breath.

i realized, with horror, this was the same way i'd ended up in el dorado the first time.

flicker.

we stood in a large square tiled with giant slabs of stone. a monolithic pyramid stood in the background. i had no trouble recognizing the place. it was the city of death, el dorado. i didn't want to be here. anywhere but here.

flicker.

we stood on a rocky plain of shining obsidian. twin moons hovered on opposite sides of the horizon, one dark and shadowy, the other brilliant white. two feminine figures stood a hundred feet distant, the thick hair on their heads writhing like snakes. they stood with legs spread shoulder width, hands reaching for the sky. their heads tilted back, mouths gaping inhumanly wide. an eerie chorus reverberated in my skull. i clamped hands to my ears, but the song filled me up, vibrating my body like a tuning fork. pressure built from the inside. the song wouldn't stop. it wouldn't stop! my teeth clamped together.

quiet!

"look at the stone," adam said in a halting voice, his hands also pressed tight to his ears. a grimace contorted his face.

two thick columns of rock spaced a hundred or more feet apart grew from the stony terrain, twisting into glittering vortexes. as they grew, a vein of white laced through the obsidian.

they're growing an alabaster arch!

these might be the people who made the grand nexus. who made the obsidian arches.

flicker.

we stood in a control room, though it looked double the size of the others i'd seen before. the agonizing song vanished from my head, the pressure abating from my skull. i slumped and heard sighs of relief from the others. a monstrous alabaster arch, rivaling the size of the obsidian arches, stood before us, a dim white glow emanating from the white veins. hordes of cherubs stood frozen around us. the nearest one twitched. its featureless black head jerked toward us, arms jutting out.

"dah nah!" it screeched.

the room burst to life as every cherub responded, wobbling toward us on infantile legs.

"holy mother of baked ham!" shelton shouted. "get us out of here!"

why was this happening to us?

i just want to go home!

flicker.

we stood in a carpeted room. a leather couch sat in front of a television. a man biting into a slice of pizza screamed. pizza still in hand, he flipped backward over the couch and scuttled on his butt toward the kitchen. deja vu smacked me in the face. i recognized this place.

it's home.

my childhood home.

the furniture had changed, but not the layout. why were we here? i looked around in confusion before an idea clicked into place. i'd wanted to go home, and the bubble had taken us here. now all i had to do was turn this infernal portal off!

disconnect! turn off! deactivate! stop!

the bubble winked out. a woman in a t-shirt and loose-fitting pajama bottoms patterned with pink cats screamed and dropped a glass of water. the glass shattered on the tile floor even as the gibbering man with pizza scooted through the spilled water.

"we're free!" i said. "let's get out of here."

the new homeowners ran shrieking down the hall, slamming a door shut. i was admittedly curious to snoop around my former digs, but now wasn't the time.

the four of us ran out the front door. i motioned them down the street, and we made our way to a strip mall near a laundry mat where my father had first taught me to feed as an incubus. we stood outside, panting. i wondered if the look of horror on shelton's face mirrored my own.

"how did we get out of the bubble?" adam asked.

i caught my panicked breath, gathering my thoughts. "somehow, it took us to places we thought of, though i'm not sure how we actually got there."

"who the hell were those god-awful singing women?" ryland asked.

"they were growing an arch," shelton said. "singing the thing from the freaking rock."

"where were we?" adam asked.

"no idea," i said. "when we ended up in that black void, i realized what was happening to us was the same thing that happened to me when i ended up in el dorado the first time."

"and then we showed up in el dorado," adam said. "i recognized it immediately."

i nodded. "same here. i just wanted to be anywhere but there."

"and it took us to freak land." shelton rubbed his jaw. "those people didn't look like seraphim," he said. "what if they're really the ones responsible for creating all the arches?"

"they looked like sirens," adam said, his tone a mix of wonder and terror. "did you see their hair? it looked alive."

"nothing good comes from a woman with living hair," ryland said, picking up a loose stone and tossing it into the woods on the side of the parking lot.

"i was wondering if they were the ones who made the grand nexus," i said. "next thing i knew, we appeared next to that huge alabaster arch."

"you think that was the grand nexus?" shelton said.

i nodded. "it seems the likeliest explanation. but we've never seen it before, so how did the portal know to take us there?"

"maybe because there's only one grand nexus, so you don't need a specific image in your mind?" adam said in an unsure tone.

shelton's face looked grim. "well, we know why daelissa hasn't fixed the arch. the control room is chock-full of cherubs. i ain't stepping foot in there again, that's for damned sure."

"it was ground zero for the desecration," adam said.

the control room at the grand nexus had been terrifying, but it didn't trouble me nearly as much as knowing the seraphim might not be the worst thing in the universe we had to worry about.

chapter 22

elyssa

elyssa watched the live feed from the ase she'd positioned outside the darkwater hq from the mansion strategy room. at least thirty black-robed figures plunged through the liquid glass on the front of the darkwater corporate building, their bodies phasing through the rippling material in lieu of a door. elyssa felt her heartbeat quicken as a bald man led the group to a levitating transport, his every motion filled with violence and anger.

"that's kassus," stacey said, pointing to the man's holographic image as projected by elyssa's arctablet. elyssa repressed a shudder. kassus was probably ordering his minions to trap justin like a rabbit. she wouldn't let that happen. she called to warn him.

"thanks, babe," he said, and hung up.

she shook her head at his cavalier tone, but knew with the combined skills of the other men in his party, they should be able to get away easily.

bella set a timer on her arcphone. "they should be back in the mansion in twenty minutes. let's get make sure we're ready to go when they arrive."

as the time ticked by, elyssa loaded her compact satchel with supplies, checked, and rechecked her gear, and tried her best not to worry. even so, her mind calculated the time it should take justin and the others to run out of the la casona way station, cross the road to the safe house, and come back through the portal. christian salazar would order the obsidian arch shut down at the way station, and trap the darkwater people in bogota for several hours.

even at a non-supernatural pace, it shouldn't take justin and the others more than ten minutes to return through the portal. but what if the perimeter had somehow been closed?

don't worry so much! her stomach tightened anyway.

elyssa huffed, and looked over her gear again.

"it's time," bella said, the petite dhampyr somehow giving off a commanding aura in the black nightingale armor elyssa had provided her.

stacey wore her own set of nightingale armor, the flexible material clinging to her curvy frame and accentuating the movement of her hips as she prowled about the room, obviously as restless as elyssa. "about bloody time," she said, her british accent thick with tension.

the three women went down to the arch room. the arch appeared inactive, but the men weren't there. she exchanged glances with bella and stacey.

"the portal is closed. shouldn't the boys be back?" elyssa asked.

"justin did say they might stay there if they needed to keep the darkwater people occupied longer," bella said.

"yes, but the portal would still be open, right?" elyssa asked.

"maybe they came back through, and used it to go somewhere else," bella replied.