Thomas Sniegoski: Where Angels Fear to Tread

“All the more reason you should have stayed put,” her head of security growled.

She was tempted to tell him to shut his mouth, and he would never have spoken again, but this wasn’t the time. “Is it true?” she asked instead, attempting to keep her excitement in check. “Is it here?”

“Blondelle believed it was,” the man answered as the members of his security team continued to shoot at the priests defending their temple.

Delilah peered around the pillar to catch a glimpse of the holy men, but a spray of automatic gunfire threw a cloud of powdered stone into her face, obscuring her vision.

“Damn them!” she shrieked, digging at her eyes.

“Are you all right?” Mathias asked, genuine concern in his voice. Mathias loved her more than his own life, and he would have given her the world if she asked for it.

But she didn’t want the world.

Yet .

“I’m fine.” She impatiently waved off his worried ministrations. “Just put a stop to this before—”

“What’s this ?” Mathias interrupted, peeking out from behind the ceiling support.

One of the priests, his thin body adorned in robes of deep scarlet and yellow, had emerged from cover, wildly firing a handgun as he made his way to the ancient altar.

“What’s he doing?” Delilah demanded, her eyes still watering from the dust.

“I don’t know,” Mathias replied, trying to get off a shot, but opposing gunfire continued to pin him and Delilah to their places behind the pillar.

Delilah waited for an opportunity between gunshots, then again stuck out her head. The priest was crouched before a small, curtained shrine on the altar. She watched as he pulled a disposable lighter from beneath his colorful robes and lit a dangling fuse that snaked out from beneath the curtain.

“What’s he doing?” she asked again, starting to stand. “What is he doing?” she repeated, louder still.

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. .

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.