Where Angels Fear to Tread

“Yeah,” Samson said, again looking around with his blind eyes, his nose twitching.

Remy heard the sound of a voice speaking rapidly, and he searched for the source. Over to the side, nearly hidden in some tall brush, he saw one of Delilah’s men standing over one of their fallen enemies, a machete ready to descend.

Moving quickly, Remy grabbed hold of the man’s wrist just as the blood-speckled blade began to fall. “No more,” he said, his eyes burning into the man’s.

Delilah’s follower had the stink of one on the verge of losing everything. From what Remy could sense, he still had some of his soul, but it wouldn’t be long until that too was gone.

The man snarled, attempting to pull his arm away, but Remy held fast.

“I’ll break it at the wrist,” Remy warned, causing the man to stop his struggles. “Go,” Remy ordered, releasing his hold.

At first it appeared the man was going to defy him, but he then thought better of it—a wise choice.

Remy knelt beside the fallen man, who still lay upon the ground. Severely injured, he clutched his blood-soaked side where he had been stabbed.

The stink of approaching death was upon him, and Remy leaned in to hear what he was saying.

“He came. . just like the pastor said he would,” the man said. There was blood on his lips now, signifying some sort of internal injury. “He came to us. . only to us to prove we are the faithful. We are the faithful, oh yes.”

“Who came?” Remy asked, laying a calming hand upon the man’s shoulder.

The man’s eyes focused upon him, seeing him for the first time.

“Dagon,” he said with a laugh. There were tears in his eyes, tears of joy. “Dagon came to us. . ”

He began to cough, spatters of blood freckling his face, as streams ran down from the sides of his mouth.

“I’m looking for a little girl,” Remy said urgently, sensing that death was near. “Was she there with you?”

The dying man seemed to momentarily focus, listening to Remy’s question.

“Yes.” His voice was no more than a whisper now. “Yes. . the Judas and his child.”

Remy felt his heart begin to beat faster.

“Are they all right?” he asked.

The follower of Dagon didn’t answer, his eyes beginning to glaze over as he gazed into the beyond.

Remy could sense the Angel of Death’s approach. Grabbing the man by the shoulders, he attempted to infuse just a little bit of his own life force into the man so that he would be able to answer.

But it was too late, and the man was gone, the last of his breath whistling from his lungs like air from a punctured tire.

“Anything?” Samson asked, approaching with his children.

“He said the father and child are there,” Remy said, rising to his feet. “But that’s all I know.”

“Seems like enough,” Samson said with a nod. “We’ll continue on and take it from there.”

Remy agreed, heading back to the SUVs stopped by the side of the desolate, backwoods road.

He watched as Samson’s children took care of their fallen, carrying them gently to the trucks, placing them in the back. The same could not be said of Delilah’s followers; their fallen were left in the road where they’d been killed, along with the bodies of the enemy.

Remy was tempted to do something, but time was now of the essence. Dagon’s followers who had fled the battle would return to the compound, warning the ancient deity that they were coming. At the moment, there was no time to respect the dead.

Going to the SUV where he’d left Deryn and Delilah, he found the passenger-side front door open, and suddenly he experienced a very bad feeling.

“Deryn,” Remy called out, hanging on to the door and finding the vehicle empty.

“Deryn!” he cried again, thinking maybe they had been forced from the car and were hiding nearby. “Deryn, are you out there?”

“They’re gone, aren’t they?” he heard Samson say.

“Yeah,” Remy said, immediately fearing the worst.

The big man chuckled. “Are you surprised?” he asked. “Delilah really has her heart set on finding that little girl.”

“And you think she took Deryn so she’d get there first?” Remy asked.

“Do you see her boy toy, Mathias, around anyplace?” he then asked.

Remy searched the crowd, and even the dead.

“No, looks like he’s gone too.”

“Then the answer to your question is yes,” Samson said. He started toward the row of SUVs parked behind the first. “We probably want to get to that compound as quickly as we can before Delilah has the chance to get into what she’s really up to.”

It was Mathias who had found her at last.

Nothing but withered flesh and bones, she was curled in the fetal position in the lowest section of the archaeological dig.

She’d returned home, long before the Palestinian settlement of Sorek had been rediscovered, hoping to find—to remember—a time when she had been human. The city had been buried deep beneath the shifting sands, covered up by the passage of time, but she’d known it was there, homing in on the place as if following posted signs by the side of the road.

Delilah could sense it there beneath her. She could practically hear the sounds of the marketplace again, the children at play.

The cries of her lost humanity calling out.

A reminder that she must suffer for her sins.

Suffer she did, and as she suffered, she was transformed into something fearful, and so far from God that she couldn’t imagine ever finding her way back.

But she tried, even after the deaths of loved ones—struck down, she believed, by an angry God—searching for a way she could show she was sorry.

This was why she had returned to the city of her birth, a city long since dead, but the place where it had all begun for her.

Like an animal of the earth, she had burrowed down into the sand, returning to a place where she had once felt safe.

And she found that trace of peace again beneath the desert sand, and she nested there in the home that had belonged to her family for generations.

That was where she lay, unfound, unnoticed, and unloved.

Until he found her.

Mathias.

She hadn’t noticed how much grayer his hair had become over their time together.

Delilah looked at him—really looked at him—as they paused in the darkness on the outskirts of the church compound.

When did he become so old? she asked herself, barely aware of the passage of time since the death of her humanity. He had been so handsome when she’d first laid eyes upon him.

Delilah could still remember the feeling of his rough hands as they plunged down into the sand and drew her upward. For some reason he had been drawn to her, to the archaeological dig that had uncovered her home and village.

He’d said he could hear her crying inside his head, and before he went mad, he’d gone in search of her.

How horrible she must’ve looked after all that time beneath the ground, but that did not stop him. She recalled how he tenderly brushed the sand from her mummified lips, and slowly. . longingly. . placed his own lips to hers, feeding her for the first time in. .

The former mercenary held up a hand, directing them to stop, as he scanned the area for threats.

“She’s close by,” Deryn said as softly as she was able to in her present condition, ringing her hands together as she almost ran in place.

It hadn’t taken much to convince the woman to leave the safety of the SUV. Her daughter’s presence was practically screaming for her to follow.

And Delilah was more than happy to oblige.

Mathias gestured for them to follow him. They carefully negotiated a heavily overgrown hill, moving through the bushes and bramble to come out at the back of a row of buildings. There were trash barrels outside the doors, and clotheslines strung between the buildings, and trees directly across; Delilah guessed these were the church’s living quarters.

They waited, she and Mathias, looking toward Deryn to show them the way.

The woman held out a trembling hand, pointing down a ways to the back of a much larger, brick structure. They continued on to it cautiously. A single light burned above the door, and Mathias reached up to unscrew it, plunging the area into darkness.

“She’s inside,” Deryn said, barely able to contain her emotion.

“Then that’s where we need to be,” Delilah said, placing a comforting hand upon the woman’s shoulder.

She could hardly manage her own excitement, sensing the power of the thing she’d desired for so many years. . the key to her freedom.

“Mathias,” she urged.

The man first tried the door and found it locked. From his back pocket, he produced a pocketknife and, kneeling down, went to work on the door.

It felt right that Mathias would be here with her; that he would be the one who would help her achieve her goal. Of all she had feasted upon, he was the strongest.

Delilah had always been amused by the former soldier’s ability to function without a soul. While others eventually withered and died, Mathias had kept going.

It was almost as if he were made especially for her.

She had not taken his soul all at once, instead choosing to feed upon it a little at a time, slowly returning to health.

To beauty.

It wasn’t long after her return that she had had the dream telling her how she could free herself, but why just be free, when the power of God could be used to make things right?

Delilah hoped she remembered them all, the husbands and children who were once part of her life, but she was sure the stuff of creation would help her to remember if necessary.

Tingling with anticipation, she heard the creak of hinges as the door swung open to allow them admittance.

Mathias turned and looked at her as he slipped the tool back into his pocket. She could see he wanted her praise; anything to set him apart from the others she possessed.

But she said nothing, walking past him through the door and into the semidarkness of a corridor, lit only by the red glow of an emergency exit sign.

“Always leave them hungry” had been her motto for millennia, and she wasn’t about to forget it now.

She could feel the object as she had in Vietnam, only this time it was stronger, calling out to her, teasing her. She was starting down the hall when someone moved past her at a run.

“She’s down here,” Deryn York said, pushing her aside. “Zoe,” the mother called out. “Zoe, honey, it’s Mommy.”

She was running now, heels clicking upon the linoleum floor.