Thomas Sniegoski: Where Angels Fear to Tread

For Rusty, Kenn, and Remy—

old friends and the new

Love and so much more to LeeAnne, and to Mulder for helping me through another one.

Many thanks also to Ginjer Buchanan, Cameron Dufty, Christopher Golden, Sheila Walker, Dave Kraus, Mike Mignola, Christine Mignola, Katie Mignola, Lisa Clancy, Pete Donaldson, Mom and Dad Sniegoski, Mom and Dad Fogg, David Carroll, Ken Curtis, Kim and Abby, Jon and Flo, Pat and Bob, Timothy Cole, and the followers of Delilah down at Cole’s Comics in Lynn.

And a very special thanks to James and Liesa Mignogna.

Vietnam, 2004

Everybody loved her.

And when they didn’t, she made them.

Delilah sat in the passenger seat of the old Jeep in a central Vietnam valley—the Cat’s Tooth Mountain barely visible through the thick canopy of lush vegetation—and waited for a sign.

Large, buzzing insects flew about her head, but only for as long as she allowed them. A single thought to cease the annoying behavior was enough to send the simple life-forms back into the emerald green forest, although many chose to linger about the bullet-riddled corpses of the holy men lying on the ground at the entrance to the ancient vine-covered temple.

She closed her eyes and breathed in the smells of this primordial location, the heady aroma of humid earth mingling with the thick scent of nearby coffee plantations. But it did little to calm her excitement.

The waiting was always the most excruciating part.

How many other faraway locations had she and her followers visited in their search for the prize? Delilah had lost count many years before, but she never gave up hope that the next unexplored cave system, forgotten temple, long-buried city, or forsaken church would offer what she so desperately sought.

The sound of gunshots from within the temple had stopped only moments before; the rapid-fire barks of death had temporarily silenced the voice of the jungle. But now, regaining its courage, it started to speak again in its primitive language of buzzing, howling, shrieking, and squawking.

And she continued to wait, watching for a sign from her followers, her eyes focused on the darkness of the temple’s entrance.

Finally bored with just sitting, Delilah got out of the Jeep, her high-heeled black leather boots—inappropriate for any sort of jungle excursion—sinking into the damp, spongy earth, which was made even moister by the copious amounts of blood seeping from the bullet-riddled corpses.

It had been quite some time since one of their expeditions had been met with such adversity. She still remembered an Inuit village in the Canadian Arctic where their attempt at locating the object of her obsession had left a bloodbath in its wake, with little to show for their troubles except some lovely fox pelts that she’d had a Paris seamstress make into a coat.

She loved that coat but seldom had a chance to wear it.

Pity.

The way those villagers had fought, she’d thought for sure she had at long last been successful, but that wasn’t the case. The Inuit tribesmen had fought with such fervor, and for what? It was as if they somehow sensed the ruthlessness of her search and how she would let nothing stand in the way of finding her prize.

It was an item she would kill again, and again, to find.

And she had killed many times more since that doomed Inuit village, but she was still no closer to finding it.

Until now, perhaps.

There was movement inside the entrance to the temple, the thick obsidian dark churning like black smoke billowing from a wet fire, as a lone figure emerged.

The man’s name was Seldon Blondelle, and he was an excellent Hound, a person gifted with an extraordinary sensitivity to objects of preternatural origins. It was his job to help her find what she so desperately sought.

“Yes, Mr. Blondelle?” she prompted, holding her breath.

Blondelle was thin—horribly emaciated—but that was to be expected, as he hadn’t eaten in weeks. The man took his job as her personal Hound very seriously, although as an extra incentive she’d made him promise not to eat until he had found her prize.

He could barely stand, and swarms of hungry insects buzzed about his gaunt face as if drawn by his nearness to death. Stumbling, he leaned heavily against the stone frame of the doorway, licking dry and cracked lips with a dark, swollen tongue.

“It’s here,” he managed, his voice an awful croak.

His words were like magic, and she felt a vitality flow through her, the likes of which she hadn’t experienced in centuries.

“It’s here,” Delilah repeated, heading toward him, walking atop the corpses as if they were little more than rubbish strewn in her path.

Nothing would keep her from the item.

Blondelle raised a trembling hand as she climbed the three stone steps to the temple landing.

“Please.” He beckoned.

She knew what he wanted; the sound of his rumbling stomach was almost as annoying as the incessant hum of the jungle bugs.

“You’ve done well, Mr. Blondelle,” she told him with a rewarding smile. “You have earned the right to eat again.”

The man’s eyes closed and he started to sob. “I can eat,” he said in a trembling hiss as he pushed himself off the wall, heading unsteadily down the steps toward the Jeep and the food supplies stored in the back of the vehicle.

There was a sound like the crack of a bullwhip, instantaneously followed by a flash from within the darkness of the temple entrance. Delilah spun around to see Blondelle fall forward, the back of his head opened up to the jungle by a well-placed bullet.

She turned again to the entrance to see one of the Vietnamese holy men cautiously emerging, chattering in his foreign tongue as he aimed a pistol, ready to gun her down.

“Don’t you dare point that thing at me,” Delilah raged.

The man instantly dropped the weapon to his side. She could see he was struggling to fight her, to usurp her will, but those who were capable of such a feat were few and far between.

She remembered the days when she would have played with the man first, maybe forced him to pluck out his own eyes and crush them between his teeth, before ordering him to kill himself by smashing his head repeatedly against the ground.

But that was a Delilah with little purpose—a Delilah drunk on the cruelty of the world and the accursed one who’d made it that way.

“Shoot yourself dead,” she instructed the man, who immediately placed the gun beneath his chin and fired, the top of his head erupting in a plume of crimson.

She stepped over the man’s still-twitching legs and eased herself into the cool darkness of the temple entrance, allowing her eyes to adjust.

More gunfire shattered the fragile silence within the temple, and she pressed herself firmly against the vine-covered stone wall, assessing its location. The shots were coming from somewhere down the corridor. She charged the hall’s length to find another doorway, and stairs descending into a larger chamber.

Bullets chewed across the wall to her left as she reached the bottom of the steps, which opened into a temple of some kind, a primitive place of ceremony, lit by flickering candlelight.

A hand grabbed her wrist firmly, yanking her to cover behind a pillar as more bullets mercilessly tore through the stone where she’d just been standing.

“What are you doing down here?” Mathias demanded. “I told Blondelle to make you wait in the Jeep until we secured the area.”

“The Hound is dead,” Delilah said.