Delilah stepped out from behind the safety of their cover.
“Delilah!” Mathias called out, reaching to pull her back, but she evaded his hands as she stalked out into the open.
He screamed her name again, while his team members continued to fire at their opponents in an attempt to protect her.
She grunted in pain as a bullet punched into her shoulder, but she did not stop. The scent of her blood mingled with the damp, stagnant air and the acrid smell of gunfire, and she used it as fuel to push herself on.
The priest saw her coming and withdrew a ceremonial dagger from beneath his robes, positioning himself in front of the curtain and the hissing fuse. His eyes told her he was willing to die rather than let her have what the curtain hid.
From the corner of her eye, she caught movement from the shadows around her, and she knew she must act. She hated to abuse her gifts, fearful that each use sent a tremor out into the ether, alerting her enemies to her whereabouts. But there were times when it simply could not be avoided.
“Stop shooting!” she screamed, her voice echoing off the stone walls.
And the barking of the guns ceased instantaneously.
“Stay where you are.”
The old priest managed to turn slightly toward the shrine, drawing Delilah’s attention to the still-burning fuse, which had almost reached the pale yellow curtain.
“You there,” she ordered the priest, “stop that fuse now.”
For a moment he seemed to be fighting her, and she considered giving the order again, but it wasn’t necessary.
With tears in his eyes, the old priest finally crouched down, grabbing the sizzling fuse between two fingers and halting its progress. Slowly he stood and turned back toward her, as if awaiting her next desire.
Delilah breathed a sigh of relief, then took a moment to examine her shoulder. It hurt like hell and was bleeding profusely, but she would heal. She always did.
It was all part of the curse.
She looked around at the other holy men who had been defending the temple. They all watched with the same fearful expression that graced the face of the old man who stood before her.
She climbed the two stone steps onto the altar platform.
“Mistress,” Mathias called out. Hearing him, she turned around to see her security head and his team watching her with eager eyes. “Be careful,” he said.
His concern for her safety was touching, but after all this time, she found herself throwing caution to the wind.
Eye to eye with the holy man, she grinned widely. “What were you trying to hide from me?” she asked playfully.
The man could not help himself, and the words spilled from his mouth in his native tongue.
He still blocked her path, and she reached out with her good arm to roughly push him aside. Delilah could feel it now. She knew she was in the presence of something. .
Forgetting the pain in her shoulder, she reached out, pulling apart the curtains and letting out a squeal of pleasure when she saw it. She could barely contain the intensity of her feelings as she gazed upon the sculpture.
It appeared to have been made of metal, crudely fashioned into the shape of a sitting infant, its short, chubby arms outstretched as if in welcome.
Delilah reached out and grasped the statue.
The pain was both immediate and excruciating.
It was as if she’d tried to embrace the sun.
She fell back, leaving behind her hands, burned to nothing more than black, crumbling ash. She rolled upon the altar, resisting the urge to scream and using the charred stumps of her arms to push herself awkwardly to her knees. The pain was all-consuming, but she could already feel her limbs beginning to grow back.
The priest was smiling at her agony.
“Mathias, come to me,” she managed, swaying to the song of her pain, forcing herself back from the brink of unconsciousness.
She felt Mathias behind her. “Help me to stand,” she ordered, and he did as she asked.
He held her about the waist as she turned toward the holy man. The priest was now chattering—praying, she imagined.
It would do him little good.
“Open it,” she spat, looking toward the metal idol upon the altar.
The priest’s chatter ceased, but he did not move.
She gave the order a second time.
“Open it.”
The man cried out in pain and lurched toward the altar. Thick, dark blood dripped from his ears, an unpleasant aftereffect for those who dared oppose her commands.
The priest’s face was a mask of struggle even as his hands reached for the iron infant.
“That’s it,” Delilah encouraged, watching his every move, trying to distract herself from the agony of her limbs growing back. Flesh and blood, arteries, veins, muscle, and bone, all coming back at once in a symphony of pain played specifically for her.
The priest’s hand hovered near the infant statue’s bulbous stomach, trembling in the humid, tropical heat as if cold.
“Do as you’re told and I’ll make the pain stop,” she whispered. “It’s as simple as that.”
Blood was oozing from his ears, running down his neck. He started to pray again and pulled his hands away.
The other faithful called to him from around the chamber, perhaps believing they could lend him some of their strength, hoping he would be able to defy her commands.
“Open it!” she bellowed, her voice booming horribly in the stone confines of the underground room.
The priest moaned.
“I’ll make the pain go away,” she said in a more controlled voice, although her own pain was quite incredible. “Open it and give me what I want. It’s quite easy.”
“Mistress, my men and I could. .,” Mathias began, but she silenced him with a glance. The priest would open the idol; that was how it had to be.
The priest was gasping for breath, thick, dark blood continuing to flow from his ears. Stiffly, he raised a hand toward the statue’s belly, his index finger beginning to glow, and rubbed the idol’s protruding stomach.
Delilah watched in utter fascination, her newly formed skeletal hands flexing and unflexing. A hole—a keyhole—had appeared in the infant’s belly, and her anticipation grew to a near- uncontrollable level.
The priest turned his tearstained face toward her, snarling as she stepped closer.
“Do it,” she hissed, knowing that the old Vietnamese man was experiencing pain beyond measure. But it could be nothing compared to what she had endured throughout her long, long life.
He inserted his still-glowing index finger into the dark hole. There was a sharp click, and a vertical seam appeared down the center of the idol.
She reached out with arms of exposed muscle and tendon, on the verge of tears. “Open it.”
The priest started to twitch and groan. Finally, releasing a scream that seemed to come from somewhere in the depths of his soul, he pried the statue apart.
It was as if all the stars in the galaxy were inside the belly of that metal infant and as if the eyes of the Heavens were all looking at Delilah. . looking at their new mistress.
Her pain was suddenly gone.
Tears streamed from her eyes as the priest slowly withdrew the idol’s wondrous contents.
It hummed and pulsed and sang as it rested in the palms of his hands. He too was staring at it, her wonderful prize, his mouth moving soundlessly.
“Please,” she said quietly, holding out her own hands, the pink of recently grown skin glistening wetly in the object’s radiance.
And then she saw the look upon the old man’s face, and she knew everything was about to go horribly wrong.
“Give it to me!” she demanded, hoping the command would finally break him, leaving him quivering and wishing for death upon the altar floor, but it seemed to do nothing.
Her prize had given him the strength to defy her.
The old man simply laughed as he tossed the object into the air, and, like a dove released from the confines of its cage, it flew up toward the ceiling of the chamber, exploding in a flash of blinding brilliance.
And then it was gone.
“You bastard,” Delilah screamed in fury, charging toward the old man.
He just stood there, a look of serenity and calm upon his lined face, even though he surely knew what was about to happen.
“You selfish, selfish bastard!”
She grabbed him by the back of his neck with a hand still tender and fresh, pulling him to her.
Pulling him toward her eager lips.
They joined in a kiss; she felt him begin to struggle, but it was all for naught.
With this kiss she would feed upon his life and his soul, and leave very little behind for the insects of this damnable jungle to dine upon.
The old man flailed wildly, attempting to scream, but her lips blocked the scream’s escape, and she fed upon that as well, savoring the deliciousness of his terror, as everything that defined him as a man—as a living, breathing human being—was sucked away.
It took only a moment to steal the old man’s life. Then, unlocking her lips from the withered remains, she allowed the dried, brittle shell of the priest to fall to the floor of the altar, where it disintegrated into a choking cloud of heavy, gray dust.
Mathias coughed, waving a hand before his face. “Mistress”—he coughed again—“I’m so sorry.”
The priest’s life force coursed through her body, speeding her recovery. Her arms had completely re-formed, though they were quite pale; nothing a few days on the Riviera wouldn’t cure.
Delilah stepped down from the altar, Mathias holding her hand so she would not fall.
Standing in the center of the chamber, she looked around at the other priests, still held in her thrall, terror etched upon their faces.
“He could have let me have it,” she announced. “And it would have changed everything.”
She turned away from their fear-twisted features, heading across the stone floor toward the stairs that would take her out of the underground chamber.
“Delilah?” Mathias called.
She stopped, turning a cold gaze to him.
“What should we do with them?” he asked, motioning toward the temple priests.
“Use your imagination,” she said with a wave of her hand, and then ascended from the bowels of the Vietnamese temple, the sound of gunfire at her back.
