Where Angels Fear to Tread

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  “What do you think?” Remy asked.

  “I think we’re going in,” Samson said. “But he’s going first.”

  He pointed in the direction of the man as his son and daughter urged their captive back into the house at gunpoint.

  The man let the cigarette fall from his mouth, grinding it out with the heel of his shoe.

  “She doesn’t allow us to smoke inside,” he said, before walking back in, two automatic rifles pointed at his back. “Come on in. I’ll take you to her.”

  More of Samson’s kids, their firearms at the ready, swarmed in through the back door, making way for them to follow.

  “Are you sure this is wise?” Remy asked, allowing Samson to hold on to his arm at they walked through the doorway into the house.

  “When have I ever done anything wise?” he asked. “I’m just rolling with the punches as I’ve done for the last few thousand years.”

  The air-conditioning must have been turned to its maximum setting, making for a sharp transition going from the damp, warm mugginess of outside, to an almost deep-freeze chill inside.

  Marko waited for them in the doorway leading from the kitchen.

  “Anything?” Remy asked.

  “There’re voices coming from the front of the house, but no signs of aggression yet,” Samson’s son said.

  “Go on ahead with the others,” his father ordered. “We’re right behind you.”

  Remy could feel the Seraphim coming awake, the potential for violence the perfect thing to stir it from its dormancy. But Remy held the power of Heaven in check, desperate not to call upon it unless an absolute necessity.

  They passed through a heavy, swinging door into a hallway of dark mahogany. Remy could see Samson’s sons and daughters up ahead, scanning every nook and cranny for potential danger, but none was to be found.

  The white-haired, soulless man was still being led by the pair with the rifles, leading the train of young soldiers deeper into the house. The closer they got to the front of the elaborate dwelling, the louder the voices became. They were moving toward the sounds, the soulless man doing as he promised and delivering them to his mistress.

  Remy escorted Samson down the center of the corridor, Samson’s children on either side of them.

  Up ahead, their prisoner was about to pass from the hallway into what could best be described as a den. The voices were louder now, and distinctly female. Remy felt Samson’s grip upon his arm painfully tighten at the sound of one voice in particular; low and throaty, distinctly sexual, and charging the air with every uttered word.

  “It’s her,” the large man hissed.

  Samson started to move ahead of him, blindly bouncing off the hallway wall, as he moved in the direction of those speaking.

  The powerful man’s soldiers followed his lead, guns drawn and ready for firefight, as they filled the doorway to the parlor.

  Remy pushed through the crowd to where Samson now swayed upon his feet.

  “Delilah,” he snarled, hate dripping like poison from the utterance of her name.

  Remy was shocked to see Deryn York sitting upon a flowered love seat, sipping from a fine china cup, and, beside her, a dark-haired, dark-skinned woman of infinite beauty.

  “Hello, Samson,” the beautiful woman said, setting her cup and saucer down upon the coffee table before her. “It’s been quite some time.”

  Remy could feel the magick in the woman’s words, in her speech, keeping them all at bay, preventing tempers from igniting.

  Deryn looked terrified, the base of her cup trembling against its saucer.

  “Are you all right, Deryn?” Remy asked her.

  She nodded, eyes wide as she stared at all the men and women in the doorway with their guns.

  “I . . . I’m fine. . . . Really . . . I’m fine,” she said.

  “See,” Delilah said, throwing up her hands. “She’s perfectly fine.”

  The beautiful woman smiled, showing off perfect teeth as white as pearls. “So why don’t we all calm down and turn our attention to a situation that requires our concern.”

  Delilah reached for her cup and saucer, reclining upon the couch as she brought the cup to her mouth.

  “Deryn’s daughter, for example,” she said, sipping nonchalantly, dark eyes staring intensely over the rim of the fine china.

  Samson began to scream, throwing back his arms and shoulders as if snapping some form of invisible restraints. “Succubus!” He lunged toward the sound of Delilah’s voice. “You’ve worked your last spell upon me, and upon this world.”

  There was murder in the man’s intent, and rightfully so, but this woman—this Delilah—knew something about the child that Remy had been hired to find, and if Samson were to kill her, that information might be lost.

  Remy moved at the speed of thought, getting between the strongman, the coffee table, and the woman who sat behind it.

  “Samson, wait,” Remy said, allowing the Seraphim to emerge. The fire of Heaven burned in his veins as he placed his hand upon the man’s chest.

  Samson’s blind eyes dropped to where his hand had fallen.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he snarled, flecks of spit shooting from his mouth. “Take your stinking hand off me and get the fuck out of the way.”

  “She knows something about the child,” Remy said, his voice booming with the authority of one of His messengers. “Kill her, and we might never find her . . . never know what’s truly going on here.”

  At that moment, Remy was prepared for just about anything. He could feel Samson’s heart beating crazily, sense the rage churning at his core.

  “Please, Samson,” Remy said. “For the sake of the child.”

  Samson looked about to explode, his fists clenched at his sides like two wrecking balls, and Remy was prepared, prepared to unleash the full power of the Seraphim in order to keep the strongman at bay.

  But it wouldn’t be necessary, for Samson wrestled with his fury, managing to suppress his nearly uncontrollable anger.

  “I’m good,” he said, breathless with the strain as he stepped back.

  Remy lowered his arm, feeling the Seraphim’s disappointment that things had not come to violence.

  “But this isn’t over,” Samson growled, directing what remained of his anger at the woman lounging upon the couch.

  “Of course it isn’t,” Delilah said, one long, perfect leg crossed over the other. “We have an innocent child to save, and a piece of creation to retrieve.”

  Piece of creation?

  Remy turned toward the women. “What was that?” he asked. The Seraphim continued to stir.

  “It’s why I’m looking for the child,” Delilah said. “She has what I’ve been searching for . . . what I need.”

  Deryn was nodding furiously.

  “It’s why she’s so different,” the child’s mother tried to explain. “This thing . . . this piece of . . .”

  “Creation,” Delilah finished. “A shard of God’s power used to shape the world and everything in it. ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. The earth was without form, and void: and darkness was on the face of the deep. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.’”

  She paused for dramatic effect, making sure it was sinking in.

  It was sinking in all right.

  “This seed of His holy power has existed on the earth since its formation, found by some of the earliest members of humanity, and protected.”

  “So how did it wind up with a six-year-old kid?” Samson asked, before Remy could.

  Delilah raised a bloodred thumbnail to her mouth. “I’ve probably been a tad overzealous in my pursuit of it, and it sought a safe haven.”

  “Inside a little girl?” Samson questioned. “That doesn’t make a whole lot of . . .”

  But it does, Remy thought. “The piece of creation needed a safe place,” he said aloud, “a place where it could hide and be protected.”

  “Yes,” Delilah agreed, nodding her head.

  Remy looked to Deryn. “When you and your husband were with the Church of Dagon . . . you were suppo
sed to give birth to a child who would house the power of a god. The unborn Zoe had been prepared . . . but the ritual was interrupted, and the god never took up residence.”

  Delilah nodded again.

  “Dagon’s loss was the fragment of creation’s gain. The child—this special child—was the perfect place for the power to hide from me,” Delilah continued, tickled by this newest revelation.

  It was all starting to make a twisted kind of sense; all but one very important thing.

  “Why would someone like you be interested in something as potentially powerful as this?” Remy asked Delilah, feeling the power of Heaven lunge threateningly within.

  It didn’t like this woman, not one bit.

  “Good fucking question,” Samson said, and his children grunted in agreement, clutching their weapons.

  “Quite simple really,” Delilah answered. “It’s no secret that I’ve grown tired of this cursed existence, and I want it to end.” She played with the crease on the leg of her slacks. “There, I’ve said it.”

  “You want to be released from your punishment?” Remy asked.

  “I want to die,” she said. “Are you happy now?”

  “And you think the fragment . . .”

  “I know the fragment can release me,” she said. “It came to me in a dream . . . divinely influenced, I’m sure . . . and it said if I found the creation piece, I would be released from my torment, which is why I’ve been searching so enthusiastically.”

  She stood up from the couch, her movements smooth, predatory.

  “I’m tired of living . . . tired of watching those I’ve learned to love wither and die from sickness and old age . . . tired of running from the likes of you and your bastard children,” she said, staring defiantly at Samson and his brood. “I’ll do anything to see it end.”

  Delilah placed her hands upon her shapely hips. “Will you help me do this, and save the life of the child in the process?” she asked.

  “Zoe is in danger?” Remy questioned, his concern escalating.

  “Oh yes,” Delilah said. “It seems that a very ancient power is still very much in the picture.”

  It was Deryn’s turn to stand now.

  “He did come,” the woman explained. “When the ritual was interrupted, it didn’t stop him from coming. . . . He came, but instead of a new body, he was forced to go into an old one.”

  “The pastor of the former Church of Dagon, and the new Church of His Holy Abundance,” Delilah said. “The old god temporarily lives within a shell of decaying flesh, and will be dead very soon. . . .”

  “Unless?” Remy asked, not liking where this was going.

  “Carl brought her there,” Deryn said, her voice starting to quake with emotion. “He brought our little girl back to the one she’d been promised to.”

  “Dagon has the child,” Remy stated.

  “Dagon has the power of creation,” Delilah added.

  Remy knew what had to be done. The child needed to be saved, and the power of God removed from the ancient deity’s possession.

  “Do you know where she is?” he asked.

  Delilah smiled a predator’s smile, bringing the scarlet thumbnail back up to her perfect teeth as she nodded once.

  “We’ll have to go there,” Remy said, looking at Samson and the others. “We’ll have to go there and bring Zoe back home.”

  “And the fragment?” Delilah asked.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea for Dagon to possess it.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more,” Delilah said.

  She turned toward her white-haired servant amongst Samson’s army.

  “Mathias, tell the others we’re leaving,” she said.

  “Yes, mistress.” Mathias stepped away from his captors and disappeared into the mansion.

  “And we’re going where?” Remy questioned.

  “I’m going to get my coat,” she explained. “There’s a private jet waiting for us at T.F. Green.” The succubus continued on from the room.

  “We can’t afford to waste any more time.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The power that still crackled through his decaying human form made him feel more alive than he had in countless millennia.

  This was but a taste . . . a taste of what it was really like. . . .

  Elijah came to him, crossing the room in an utter panic, blocking his view of the child . . . the glorious child.

  “Get out of the way!” the thing that was Pastor Zachariah shrieked as he attempted to crawl to his feet. But the pain was excruciating, and he crumbled to the floor.

  “Pastor,” Elijah whispered, kneeling down beside him, “you’re hurt. . . . Let me . . .”

  He was hurt. Dagon could feel the broken bones, his ruptured internal workings struggling to perform their functions to keep him alive. His skin was charred black in places; red and bubbled in others.

  The power . . . the wonderful power had done this to him.

  The power of God.

  Dagon knew he would expire soon, the frail human armature that had become his prison, failing by the second. But he had to stay alive—long enough to claim this power as his own; to take what had belonged to another far more powerful than he, for with it, he could achieve the greatness that had eluded him.

  He could sense the life radiating from Elijah, the young man’s concern for his health and well-being touching, but irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

  Using what strength remained in his failing body, Dagon turned his attention to the youth, grabbing him by the back of his neck with a charred and blackened hand, and yanking him down toward his hungry mouth.

  The boy didn’t even scream. It was almost as if he knew what was going to happen to him—that the sacrifice of his life would allow the old god to go on long enough to reclaim what had been lost so very long ago.

  Dagon’s teeth sank deep into Elijah’s throat, and his face was suddenly awash in the spray of blood.

  And life.

  The deity felt himself growing stronger, and he knew it wouldn’t last.

  But it was enough.

  He continued to gorge himself on Elijah’s body, flesh and blood entering his hungry mouth and providing the fuel to keep his own ravaged body alive.

  The child continued to stand where he touched her, stiff as a store mannequin, as the power of creation continued to leak from the punctures he’d put in her flesh and to swirl above her head.

  Though fearing for his continued survival, he could not keep himself away, and began to crawl across the floor, dragging his shattered limbs behind him like a tail.

  The child’s eyes were suddenly upon him, her expression going from blank to complete revulsion.

  “No! No! No! No!” she wailed, shaking her hands before her in total panic.

  Flecks of divine power sprayed from her wounds, landing at her feet to form a barrier of pulsing radiance to keep him at bay.

  Dagon recoiled from the brilliance, his single good eye nearly cooking in its damaged socket.

  He needed the child . . . needed what thrived inside of her.

  A ghostly moan close by captured Dagon’s attention.

  The child’s father—the Judas—was still lying stunned upon the floor, but he had started to come around. Dagon saw that the child noticed this as well, a glint of expectation in her innocent eyes.

  Daddy would save her.

  Dagon scrabbled across the floor, reaching out and grabbing the father’s ankle with charred claws, pulling him closer across the plastic-covered floor. The man struggled weakly, but he was no match for the desperate Dagon.

  The dying deity crawled atop the man, hearing his screams of terror and urging him to carry on the histrionics.

  The child noticed as well, peering over the growing barrier at her screaming father.

  “That’s it,” Dagon gurgled through the fluids filling his throat. “Look here.”

  The child was staring now, panic on her face.

  “Daddy,” she said as she made a move to come closer, but the barrier stopped her with a crackling hum.

  Who is the master
here? Dagon wondered. The child had been bred as a receptacle for divinity, but had the power taken control, as he had the body of Pastor Zachariah?

  “Drop the barrier,” Dagon commanded.

  The child stared, her eyes frozen in fear.

  Dagon grabbed her father’s head, smashing it down on the floor, stopping him from flailing.

  “Drop it!” he ordered again.

  And still the child remained safely behind the wall of burning power.

  Dagon made sure she was watching as he gripped her father’s skull, pulling back on his head to expose the width of his throat. The ancient deity opened his mouth, showing the child he was prepared to bite.

  “Daddy, no!” she shrieked, starting to whimper and cry.

  “Then drop the barrier,” Dagon said. He didn’t have much time, the burst of strength he’d received from feeding upon his faithful disciple rapidly fading.

  “Do it,” he screamed, a spray of warm blood clouding the air from his outburst. His strength was failing, and it would not be long before he was no more.

  Another ancient power gone from existence.

  Forgotten.

  He sensed the blood thrumming through the man’s body under him and found himself gazing down at his throat; the carotid artery pulsing beneath the thin veneer of flesh.

  Dagon didn’t want to die and was desperate for as much life as he could have. He lowered his mouth, prepared to rip out the Judas’ throat to sustain him for that much longer, when the child cried out.

  “Don’t hurt my daddy!” she screamed, stomping her foot upon the plastic-tarp-covered floor.

  And as the foot landed upon the cover, the barrier was gone in a flash, the smell of burned ozone lingering in the air.

  Dagon smiled, even as he was dying.

  His suspicions were correct; the child did manage some amount of control over the power hidden inside her.

  She had placed her hand over where his nails had punctured her flesh, and Dagon watched as she moved her frail hand away to reveal that the wounds were no longer there, a trace of red, irritated skin the only evidence that the injuries had been there at all.

  Oh, to have such power, he thought as desperation filled him.

  He would be dead in a matter of moments; all the suffering he had endured since crossing over to this forsaken world, for naught.