Page 2 of Where Angels Fear to Tread

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 . . .

  Something divine.

  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.

  This is it, she thought. The moment she’d waited centuries for was finally here. What had pulled her from a living death of her own making was about to be revealed.

  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, se
lfish 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.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Boston, now

  Remy Chandler watched the older woman as she sat across from him, sipping her gin—no, her Tanqueray—and tonic from a short brown straw.

  She’d been quite specific with the waitress.

  He was trying to figure out what it was exactly that he didn’t like about her.

  She leaned forward, placing her glass precisely in the center of the cardboard coaster in front of her. “My grandmother, God rest her soul, used to have two Tanqueray and tonics every day,” Mrs. Grantmore said, straightening the coaster. “She said they helped her keep her wits about her. She was ninety-eight when she finally passed.”

  It was obvious that Remy was supposed to be impressed.

  “Isn’t ninety-eight the new eighty-five?” he joked, taking a sip of his soda water with lime.

  Mrs. Grantmore’s daughter, Olivia, sitting quietly beside her mother on the love seat in the lobby bar of the Westin Copley Place hotel, chuckled before taking a drink of her Diet Coke.

  Remy liked Olivia. She seemed like a sweet kid.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Mrs. Grantmore said dismissively, reaching for her drink and bringing it to her mouth, careful not to drip any of the condensation from the glass onto her white silk blouse.

  Remy crossed his ankle over his knee, pulling the cuff of his dark jeans over the tongue of his brown loafer.

  This meeting was exactly what he had expected, and one he would have preferred to have had at his office. Having it at the Westin, out in the open, was uncomfortable, especially with Olivia present.

  “So . . . ,” Remy began, faking cheerfulness. He leaned forward in the overstuffed chair and placed his drink on the glass-topped table before him. “You’re probably wondering about my findings.” He grabbed the folder from the seat beside him and opened it.

  Mrs. Grantmore turned to look at her daughter as she returned her glass to the coaster.

  “Of course, Mr. Chandler. I’m sure you’re a very busy man. Go on. Tell us what you’ve found.”

  Olivia, who had been silently staring into the bubbles of her soft drink, looked up, making eye contact with him.

  He tried to assuage her fears with a comforting smile.

  “You asked me to look into the background of one James Wardley,” he said, looking down at the file.

  Mrs. Grantmore reached over and took her daughter’s hand. The look Olivia flashed her made it clear the gesture was not appreciated.

  “Go ahead, Mr. Chandler. What did you learn?”

  Remy shrugged. “To be honest, not a whole lot.”

  He watched as the older woman’s features momentarily tightened, her stare becoming more intense.

  Olivia looked as though a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

  “You found nothing out of the ordinary?”

  “Nothing,” Remy said, continuing the litany of his findings. “James Wardley of Lynn, Massachusetts, born August 16, 1988, to Harriet and Robert Wardley. Attended Lynn Classical High School, graduating in 2006 at the top of his class. Enrolled at Northeastern University, currently majoring in electrical engineering and—”

  “There was nothing . . . out of sorts . . . say, a criminal history?” Mrs. Grantmore interrupted.

  Remy slowly shook his head. “Not really. There was something about a party and some underage drinking, but no charges were ever filed.”

  He closed the file and met the older woman’s eyes. She was speechless. Obviously it wasn’t the result she was looking for.

  “See, Mother?” Olivia said, still clutching her mother’s hand. “There’s nothing for you to worry about. James is a good boy.”

  Silently Mrs. Grantmore removed her hand from her daughter’s.

  “I seem to be developing a rather bad headache,” the older woman said. “Probably the humidity and this air-conditioning.” Her handbag was on the floor at her feet and she bent forward, plucking out a wallet. Fishing inside for a moment, she found a twenty-dollar bill and handed it to Olivia.

  “Would you be a dear and buy me a bottle of Tylenol from the gift shop?” she asked, a forced smile upon her strained features.

  “Mother, you promised to let this go if I agreed to . . .”

  “Please, Olivia,” her mother snapped. “Go to the gift shop.”

  The pretty young woman rose from her seat, briefly glancing at Remy with pleading eyes before making her way across the hotel lobby toward the gift shop.

  As soon as Olivia was out of earshot, Mrs. Grantmore turned back to Remy.

  “A regular model citizen,” she said sarcastically, picking up her drink and taking a gulp from the glass, this time forgoing the straw.

  “As your daughter said,” Remy answered, “he’s a good boy. You should be glad.”

  “Glad, Mr. Chandler?” she scoffed. “It’s obvious you don’t have children.”

  Remy felt himself immediately rankle. Having children had always been a sensitive issue in his long, otherwise happy marriage to Madeline. No matter how much she had said that she understood they couldn’t have a family, he had always believed a part of her resented him for it. Because she was human, and he . . . wasn’t, he had deprived her—them—of something special.

  But it didn’t matter now, because she was gone. And at that moment, he realized that was the first time he’d thought of her that afternoon.

  And it bothered him.

  “No, I don’t have children,” he replied tightly. “But I think if I did have a young, attractive, intelligent, and respectful daughter like Olivia, I would be quite happy to see her dating someone with similar characteristics and not the local crack dealer.”

  Mrs. Grantmore used the stirrer in her drink to move the ice around.

  “No, not the local crack dealer, but close enough.”

  Remy couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “What about the boy’s father?” she asked. “One of the other investigators mentioned that his father might have had some trouble with the law.”

  “One of the other investigators?” Remy felt his pulse
quicken.

  “Well, you’re certainly not the first I’ve hired since Olivia told me she was dating,” the conniving woman scoffed. “Did you look into the father’s background?”

  It took all of Remy’s strength to remain calm and professional.

  But he could feel it stirring inside him.

  The power of the Seraphim had been much more active and more difficult to silence of late. If he let his guard down, even just a bit, he could only imagine what the power of Heaven would do to the woman.

  “His father did some time in a juvenile detention center for car theft more than twenty years ago, but he hasn’t been in any kind of trouble since,” Remy said. “But I don’t see what that has to do with—”

  “That’s good,” she said, ignoring him. “We can work with that; maybe make some connection to genetics.”

  “Genetics?” Remy started to laugh in disbelief. If he hadn’t, he wasn’t quite sure what he—what the angelic nature he had squirreled away inside him—might have done.

  For an instant he imagined the fires of Heaven, leaping from the tips of his blackened fingers and consuming the woman’s hateful flesh.

  “This might seem funny to you, Mr. Chandler, but I assure you it is not,” Mrs. Grantmore said with obvious annoyance. “My daughter is the most important thing in my life. Everything my husband and I have worked so hard to acquire will someday belong to her. . . .”

  “And to someone you deem worthy,” Remy completed, not bothering to hide his disgust.

  “The key word is worthy,” Mrs. Grantmore agreed. She finished her Tanqueray and tonic, slamming the ice-filled glass down with enough force to rattle the tabletop. “I’m not about to allow some worthless piece of riffraff to use my daughter—”

  “Mother.”

  Olivia had returned, although neither Remy nor Mrs. Grantmore had noticed her approach, so wrapped up were they in their . . . discussion.

  The older woman took a deep breath and composed herself. “Did you find the Tylenol?” she asked.

  Her daughter let the bag containing the bottle of pills drop into her mother’s lap.

  “Thank you, dear.”

  Remy wasn’t sure how much the young woman had heard, but the look upon her face told him it was enough.