Where Angels Fear to Tread

“Yeah, it’s bad,” he said.

“Then what are you doing here?” she asked him.

He shrugged, reopening a wound on his shoulder, allowing a crimson trail to run down his chest toward his taut stomach.

“Something’s wrong,” Remy said, dabbing at the blood with his fingertips. “Something’s keeping the Seraphim locked up.”

A warm wind came up suddenly off the water. It smelled of death.

“And you need it?” Madeline asked, holding on to the large brim of her hat.

Remy didn’t answer.

“Why is it so hard for you to admit that sometimes you need to be what you actually are?”

He looked at the woman he loved, feeling a nearly overwhelming sadness with the intrusive memory that she was now gone from his life.

“Because I don’t want to be that,” he said.

She smiled at him then, shaking her head in that sometimes-you’re-so-gosh-darn-cute way.

“And you won’t be,” she told him. “Not now. . not after all you’ve been through. You could never be the way you were again. You’ve gone through. . you’ve lived through so much.”

“I guess,” he said. “But it still doesn’t change that something’s preventing me from getting in touch with my other side.”

“Dagon?” she guessed.

“Yeah,” he said, gazing out over the dark surf. It resembled a sea of oil, it was so black. “It looks as though he somehow gained possession of that fragment of creation Delilah was looking for.”

She shoved her delicate feet beneath the sand, burying them.

“So that’s it then,” she said. “You give up?”

“I’m trying, but I’ve got, like, sixty dead guys clawing and biting at me, and I can’t. . ”

“So case closed?”

“No,” he said, refusing to let her push his buttons. “Not case closed.”

“Then what are you doing here?” she asked him.

He could see the smirk on her face as she stared ahead at the pounding, black surf, knowing full well she was getting under his skin.

“I really don’t know,” he said. “And I guess I should probably get back there.”

“You probably should,” she said, pretending to ignore him as he got up from his chair.

His body was in pain, gashes, cuts, and bites bleeding profusely.

“I’ll see you later?” he asked.

“You bet,” she said, looking his way and giving him a wink.

He hated to leave her, but he had a god to kill.

And a little girl to save.

Zoe always knew she was special.

Even as a little, little baby, she had known she was unlike anybody else; unlike Mommy, unlike Daddy, unlike all the other kids she would see in Florida.

Because she had something special inside of her that nobody else in the whole wide world had.

At least that was how it had been.

Until the monster stole some of her specialness from her. That had hurt really bad, and she had decided to go deep inside herself, to find a place to hide until the monster had gone away.

Her specialness was in this place hiding too, and it was sad because it wasn’t whole anymore.

Zoe was very upset that it was sad, and she asked it if she could do anything to make it happy again.

It did not answer her, which really wasn’t so strange, but it decided to show her things. . pictures inside her head that sometimes she would like to draw later.

Zoe saw all kinds of things; things that might happen, and things that had already happened. She saw the man with the black doggy again. Zoe liked this man and hoped someday she might get to play with his doggy. She saw her mommy and daddy, and she knew her daddy had been bad, taking her away so that Mommy could not find her. But her mommy was close by—she knew this; she could feel this. .

The monster made her want to hide deeper and deeper. At first he had been an old man, but after he had taken some of the specialness. .

Scared now, she asked the specialness to stop showing her these things, but it ignored her, whispering that it had to show her, that she needed to see what was happening so she could make things right. . so she could make the specialness whole again.

Zoe didn’t understand what it meant, knowing full well the monster was not going to give it back.

She wanted her mommy. She wanted to feel one of her special hugs; she wanted to lie down with her on the couch and watch cartoons. Her mommy would make it so she wasn’t afraid anymore.

But the specialness told her no.

Zoe was angry, telling the specialness it was being mean.

And the specialness said nothing, choosing instead to show her more pictures inside her head; only this time what was going to happen wasn’t what she saw.

The monster had done something to her daddy while she was hiding, making him do things he didn’t want to. Her daddy had brought her to a schoolroom like the ones where the big kids went, and where she would one day go when she got big.

Zoe knew these pictures had already happened while she was hiding inside her head. It was dark inside the big kids’ classroom, and she and her daddy were hiding.

But from whom?

Someone came running around the corner, and suddenly Zoe knew who it was. She had felt her mommy coming, and she was here.

Mommy will protect me, she thought as she crawled out from inside her head, just in time to see her daddy do something very bad.

Daddy had a knife in his hand as he went to see Mommy.

Zoe thought that maybe they would be nice to each other now. . that they would be happy to see each other. . that they wouldn’t fight.

She thought they were hugging, but as Daddy stepped back, she saw that Mommy was holding her belly, and that there was red. . blood. . on her stomach and her hands.

Daddy had done something to Mommy.

Zoe watched in horror as her mommy fell down on the floor with so much blood coming from her.

And that was when the specialness whispered in her ear like a buzzing bee.

You have to take it back, or your mommy will die.

Remy wasn’t sure how long he’d blacked out, but at least he was still alive.

The stink of the dead was incredibly foul, their fetid mass pressing him down to the ground as they attempted to get at him.

He tried to summon his true self again, but found the power still blocked by something stronger.

He fought, striking out at the decaying flesh of his enemies. Swimming to the surface of this sea of reanimated corpses, he caught sight of Dagon, the ancient deity presiding over this bloodbath. The god still stood there, the power of creation radiating from his loathsome form, a beatific smile upon his monstrous face.

Their gaze connected again as Remy was about to be pulled down in a squirming undertow of rot and decay, but he found an untapped reserve of strength, fighting to remain above the clawing dead.

“Such spirit,” Dagon announced as he reached down to grab him by the throat, yanking him up from the writhing sea of reanimated corpses.

Remy struggled in the deity’s grasp, still hearing the sounds of fighting somewhere in the distance behind him; the sporadic blasts of gunfire, and dwindling battle cries. Some of them had managed to survive; some of them were still fighting.

“It seems such a waste to allow one as strong as you to die in such a way,” Dagon said with a chuckle. “All that power churning around inside you.”

Remy struggled in the deity’s grasp, lashing out in any way he could, functioning now on purely the basest of instincts.

“Ferocious,” Dagon said mockingly, holding Remy’s thrashing form at a distance. “I’m curious though; did He send you to find me?”

“I don’t. . don’t know who you. . mean,” Remy wheezed as the grip upon his throat grew tighter.

“Don’t play stupid with me, Seraphim,” Dagon roared, giving him a vicious shake. “Why else would a soldier of God be amongst this rabble? The All-Father wants His power back, and I have no intention of giving it to Him.”

Darkness danced at the corners of his vision, threatening to plunge him into unconsciousness, but Remy held on long enough to ask the question. He had to know if all this—the fighting and the death—if it had all been for nothing.

“The child,” he croaked, still dangling from the monstrous being’s clutches, “does she still live?”

Dagon appeared taken aback by the question.

“The child?” he asked. “Your concern is for the child?” He started to laugh, a horrible sound that echoed through the night.

“She lives. . for now,” he said, drawing Remy closer. “But soon all that is special inside of her”—he patted his scaled breast—“all of it will reside within me.”

The deity’s smile grew enormous. “And then there won’t be a thing that God, or His winged soldiers, will be able to do to stop me.”

It was Remy’s turn to laugh.

Dagon loosened his grip.

“Did I say something to amuse you, Seraphim?”

Remy’s eyes had been closed, but he slowly opened them to look into Dagon’s angry gaze.

“You amuse me. You’re nothing but a nearly forgotten deity that’s only received a reprieve from oblivion by stumbling onto something that’s given him a taste of power, the likes of which he’s never before tasted,” Remy told him with a sneer. “God eats punks like you for breakfast.”

Dagon laughed sharply.

“Speaking of breakfast,” he said, drawing Remy closer to him, “I’ve never tasted angel before.”

Dagon’s mouth grew incredibly wide.