Where Angels Fear to Tread

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The first question that popped into Remy’s head as he watched with abject fascination as the corpses shambled toward them was why there were so many bodies buried beneath a cornfield.

They were surrounded by the reanimated dead; even Dagon’s followers, just cut down in the hail of bullets, were struggling to their feet to stand with their leader.

Samson sniffed the air as he turned in a circle.

“Dead guys, right?” he asked Remy.

“Lots of them.”

“Wonder if they’re fast or slow,” the strongman asked, just before the corpses attacked.

The reanimated screamed their rage as they charged, a wave of rotted flesh and anger coming at them from all sides.

“Fast,” Remy said, firing into the first of the moving corpses to reach him. He looked to be a slightly overweight teen, dressed in a ripped T-shirt and baggy jeans. His throat had been torn out, but it didn’t appear he had been dead all that long.

The Colt fired an enhanced bullet into the dead kid’s face, stopping him almost immediately in his tracks. Punching through the thick skull, the bullet lodged in the decaying brain, working its magick on the unnatural power that made the body mobile. But it was only the first.

The dead were like a swarm of ants, rushing at them even through a hail of gunfire.

“Form a circle!” Samson bellowed over the roars and moans of the reanimated. His kids obeyed to the best of their ability, shooting off their pistols and rifles in an attempt to reach their siblings and father.

Some made it; others . . .

Delilah’s people were less inclined to listen, choosing instead to hold their ground.

Remy saw they weren’t doing all that well; every corpse to fall was quickly replaced by three or four others. He did the best he could, firing his enhanced weaponry and taking down their attackers one at a time.

But it wasn’t enough.

“Any tricks up your sleeves would be greatly appreciated,” Samson said as the corpse of a legless woman scrambled between them, biting into the thigh of the big man with jagged yellow teeth.

Samson bellowed, reaching down to tear the woman from her hold. He broke the corpse, snapping and folding it as if getting ready to throw a cardboard box in the trash.

“Holy Hand Grenade, a one-time divine-intervention phone call,” he said, tossing aside the pulverized body. “Anything, anything at all.”

Remy glanced over to see Dagon standing there, his arms spread to the Heavens, a divine power crackling from his hands.

This was the power that Delilah had been seeking; the power of creation, the power of life over death.

This was the power that had to be shut off if they were going to survive this, but was that possible?

Remy knew this power; he had felt it exude from That which was his Creator. This was the power that had made the universe . . . the power that had made him . . . the power that had made them all.

It made him feel sick to see it being used in such a tawdry fashion. And he didn’t want to even think about how this creature had acquired it.

More and more of Remy’s comrades were falling, and as they fell and were torn apart by the vicious dead, they too rose to join the legions of the reanimated against their brethren. The dead were relentless in their attack.

Remy ejected an empty clip from his Colt, quickly snapping in the next in one fluid movement. He took down an old woman in a flowered nightgown, her white hair already speckled with blood and brains, even before two of the special bullets were unloaded into what remained of her face.

Their own number had dwindled by half, most of Delilah’s followers having already been taken to join the ranks of their attackers.

Automatic gunfire blared like staccato blasts of thunder as those who had managed to hold their own continued their struggle. Samson, his clothes torn and bloody, continuously lashed out, powerful blows falling upon the dead with the force to pulverize.

And still they kept coming.

Remy knew what he had to do, and though it was excruciating to admit, little else would suffice.

Reaching down beneath his human façade, he found the power of Heaven waiting, and he extended his hand.

I have need of you, Remy called, urging the power to come forth. And as it surged upward, his body flushing with the power of God, he felt it recede as quickly as it had arrived.

Remy was shaken, his body filled with the agony of his true nature repressed. He looked toward the ancient god whose gaze had fallen directly upon him.

“I know what you are,” the deity roared inside Remy’s head. “And you are not wanted here, warrior of Heaven.”

By now the dead were at him, so close, and so many, that his weapon could do little. The dead had him, dragging him down to the ground, the sickening stench of blood and decay flooding his nostrils enough to suffocate him . . .

As the dead made great efforts to make him one of their own.

Delilah held the metal bowl against herself, moving the electric mixer around through the golden cake batter until all lumps had disappeared.

Satisfied, she turned the mixer off, ejecting the beaters onto a waiting paper towel from which she picked up one of them, hungrily licking the batter from the blades.

Perfect, she thought, enjoying the taste of the cake batter she had made from scratch. She spooned the thick contents of the bowl into the cake pan. Completely content in her actions—indeed, in her life—Delilah hummed a song, the name of which she did not know.

Right then she experienced a moment of perfect bliss. She couldn’t imagine life being any better.

Smoothing out the batter with a spatula, she opened the preheated oven and slid the cake inside to bake. Setting the timer, she prepared to clean up, and then get the dining room decorated for the party.

It was her youngest’s birthday. David was going to be six years old. He would be starting school this year, and she experienced a pang of sadness, which quickly went away when she felt the stirring of life in her protruding belly.

Five months pregnant, she thought with a smile as she laid her hands upon the material of her flowered maternity dress. She and her husband had assumed they were done with babies.

This thought made her laugh as she strolled from the kitchen toward the dining room. She could hear the kids going wild outside with their father, and she strolled over to the sliding glass door to see what they were all up to.

It was warm outside, and the kids were enjoying the pool, as well as squirt guns and the hose.

There were children everywhere she looked, and for a moment, she fought to catch her breath.

How many children do I have?

The thought was totally bizarre, and she had no idea where it came from. She had as many children as she had, and that was that.

A water balloon struck the glass door, exploding in wetness, and she instinctively screamed aloud, jumping back.

Her husband, Sam, was looking at her through the door, a huge smile upon his rugged face. Looking at him standing there, wearing only his shorts, his muscular body exposed, she could understand completely why they had as many children as they did.

She slid the door open a crack to speak to him.

“It’s a good thing for you I’m pregnant,” she said, shaking her fist.

He pretended to cower in fear, just as six of her children, three boys and three girls, between the ages of eight and twelve, attacked him with their own water artillery.

She laughed uproariously as she watched them chase her husband around the yard, shrieking at the top of their lungs, as he narrowly evaded being hit by the water-filled balloons.

Perfect, she said to herself, again thinking of her life and how absolutely rewarding and wonderful it all was. She couldn’t imagine it being any better.

Delilah sensed she wasn’t alone in the dining room, and she turned from the view of her family to see a little girl, no older than six, sitting on the floor beside her dining room table. The child rocked from side to side, staring ahead at something Delilah was not privy to see.

“Who are you, darling?” she asked, cautiously moving closer, not wanting to scare the little girl. “Are you here to play with the kids?” she asked.

The girl must’ve been one of her kids’ friends, but she didn’t recognize her from the neighborhood. The child said nothing, continuing to rock back and forth and to stare intensely ahead.

“Hey, are you all right?” Delilah asked her. “Do you . . . do you want me to call your mommy?”

The girl suddenly sat up bolt straight, her eyes widening as if she were seeing something terrible.

“My mommy’s hurt,” she said, her voice rising to the level of a scream.

“Oh, honey,” Delilah said, grabbing hold of the back of one of the dining room chairs as she lowered herself down to the child’s level. It wasn’t as easy as it used to be with her belly growing so . . .

Delilah looked down to see her stomach strangely flat.

That’s odd, she thought, staring down at where the bulge of life used to be. To look at it this way, it almost looks as though I’m not pregnant anymore.

“She’s hurt,” the child was screaming now, climbing to her feet. “My daddy hurt my mommy!”

Delilah reached out to the child, wanting to take her into her arms and comfort her. She wanted to tell her everything was going to be all right.

Perfect.

But something told her that this wasn’t the case, that things were far from perfect. There was a nearly deafening rumble from outside, and Delilah turned to glance toward the sliding glass door. If there was a storm coming, she wanted her family to come inside.

She wanted them there with her.

But it had grown dark as night out where the sun had once been shining on a—dare she think it—perfect day.

“Sam,” she said, calling out her husband’s name. “Kids!”

Standing at the glass door, she peered out into the darkness. No longer could she see her children playing, or her husband, or even her yard, for that matter.

There was only darkness.

Delilah turned from the glass door to speak to the mysterious child. Somehow she knew this little girl would know what had happened.

“Where are they?” Delilah asked, suddenly on the verge of hysteria. “Where is my family?”

“Gone,” the little girl said with a stamp of her foot. “All gone.”

And the world . . . Delilah’s world . . . wasn’t so perfect anymore.

Mathias twitched uncontrollably and moaned as he thrust, climaxing for the fourth time since he and the woman he loved had awakened aroused, hungry for love.

He slumped atop her supple form, jamming his panting face against her neck as she squirmed beneath him.

“Is that all you have?” Delilah asked in a panting whisper, her hand already on the way down between their legs to arouse him to prominence again.

He kissed her neck, his tongue sneaking out to lick at the saltiness of her sweating flesh.

“You’re going to kill me,” he said with a lascivious chuckle. She responded in kind, working her magic yet again on what he believed, up until a few moments ago, to be a tired and withered member.

Delilah rolled him onto his back as she squirmed out from beneath his weight.

“It appears you still have some life left in you,” she said, working his growing stiffness with a voracious smile.

Mathias smiled in return, filled to bursting with his love and passion for this woman who had become his life.

Fully erect now, she climbed astride him, lowering herself down onto his swollen manhood.

“So we’d better take advantage,” she said, beginning to move slowly up and down, riding him. “For who knows how much longer we actually have?”

He surrendered to her passions, closing his eyes and immersing himself in the unbelievable pleasure of her. She was everything to him, and he couldn’t imagine a world in which she wasn’t his—body and soul.

Entering a kind of fugue state, he lay there listening to the moans of her pleasure, adding his own sounds of bliss to their symphony of passion as they both grew closer to yet another climax.

But suddenly Delilah stopped her rhythmic pounding and was speaking to someone.

“Hello there,” his love said.

His eyes snapped open as she disengaged herself from their lovemaking, crawling off him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, looking to see that his woman was staring across the room.

There was a little girl sitting upon the floor.

Mathias crawled to the foot of the bed to join his love, who now covered her glorious nakedness with a sheet. He wasn’t sure why, but seeing this child filled him with a sense of overwhelming dread.

“Who could she be?” Delilah asked.

And Mathias just stared at the silent little girl, who rocked to her own inaudible rhythm; suddenly he knew exactly who she was.

She was the end of it all.

The water was glorious.

The sun was slowly fading, reflecting off the ocean and giving it a strange, coppery hue.

Almost like . . .

Deryn didn’t even want to go there; thoughts like that didn’t belong in her head. She had to stay positive, if not for herself, for Zoe.

The smiling child, water wings inflated upon her arms, and a life jacket securely fastened about her neck and waist, was slowly dog paddling toward her with the help of her husband.

Things are good now, she thought as she watched the two loves of her life approach.

It had been a trial, with Zoe being sick and all, but since Boston, things seemed to be moving in a positive direction.

Deryn held out her hands to the paddling child.

“Come on, big girl, you can do it.”

She loved how Carl, her great protector from harm, doted on the little girl. It wasn’t too long ago that she had been afraid they wouldn’t make it as a couple; that his joblessness and Zoe’s illness would just be too much for them.

But she had faith; faith in her child, and faith in angels.

The thought threw her. She’d never been a religious person, so didn’t really understand where the sudden belief in winged servants of God even came from, but if it was this belief that helped to make their life better, then she guessed she was more religious than she’d thought.

The sun was pretty much gone now, a sleepy eye peering over the gulf horizon. There was no doubting what the water resembled now, and she swam around in a circle to greet her child and husband—to dispel the nasty thought.

But they were gone.

How is this possible? she wondered, treading water. They were here just a moment ago.

“Carl?” she called out, looking all around. “Zoe?”

The water seemed to have grown heavier, thicker, and a strong smell—the stink of metal—assailed her senses.

She knew the smell, and what it was trying to tell her.

“Oh God,” she said, starting to swim toward shore. It splashed in her mouth as she paddled furiously; the taste of copper and iron.

On the shore ahead, she saw the figure of a child waiting for her. At first she wasn’t sure, but she realized it was her daughter, but not the smiling, happy child who had been swimming out to her seconds ago.

This child was different.

“Zoe!” Deryn cried out as the water grew choppier and the clouds in the sky above churned with darkness. Nothing would stop her from reaching her child.

Nothing would keep her from holding on to the happiness she had attained.

The scarlet waters churned, and an undertow like nothing she had ever experienced in these waters pulled her down beneath the waves.

Down into a sea of blood.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Madeline said from her beach chair.

Remy sat across from her in his own chair, his body bloodied, scratched, and bitten. He didn’t want to answer . . . didn’t want to worry her.

The beach was as black as night, even though he knew it had to be midafternoon. That was when they’d gone to the beach most often, midafternoon.

“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.

“Wonder if you’ll taste as good as you smell.”

And he prepared to take a bite.

Delilah opened her eyes to the sound of a child’s screams, and the world had changed.

She looked around, realizing she was not in a place she recognized. Moments before she had been in her home, but now . . .

It took her a moment to get her bearings as she tried desperately to recall what had happened and whether she had turned off the oven.

And then she remembered the strange child in her dining room.

“Sam!” she cried out for her husband, her eyes scanning her surroundings for a sign of something—anything—that was familiar.

There was a man standing beside her, and as she looked at him, he began to sob. She recalled suddenly that his name was Mathias, and that he loved her more than anything because she made him that way.

The man was crying as she reached out.

Mathias grabbed her hand and brought it to his mouth, kissing it over and over again, drenching it with his plaintive tears.

“I want it back,” he said through trembling lips. “Please let it come back to me. . . . Please . . .”

And little by little, bit by bit, Delilah remembered.

She remembered what the truth was.

A powerful rage filled her as she realized she had been manipulated, entranced by a power that had shown her what could be.

A taste—if she were to possess it.

There was a man—not quite a man anymore—with a rather large knife standing over the body of the fallen woman he’d just stabbed. He looked ashamed at what he had done.

The little girl had gone to her mother, pulling her dying form up onto her lap, rocking from side to side and repeating over and over, “You’re okay, Mommy. Please get up. You’re okay, Mommy. Please get up. You’re okay, Mommy. Please . . .”

Delilah had no idea if the woman would be all right; nor did she care. All she was concerned with at the moment was what was inside that little girl, and how she needed it to give her back a world denied to her.

She sensed a moment at hand; a moment that she must seize with both hands, and throttle the life from, if anything beneficial was going to come from it.

“You,” she said, looking toward the still-crying Mathias.

He responded with red, watery eyes, barely able to contain his emotions.

“You want your fantasy back?” she asked him. “Bring me the girl and we’ll see what can be done about making your dreams come true.”

The expression on his face became rapturous, as if he could never hope to bring what he had experienced back, but she had shown him otherwise.

She had shown him the truth. It could be so.

Mathias went to work, making his move toward the little girl.

“You’re okay, Mommy. Please get up. You’re okay, Mommy. Please get up. You’re okay, Mommy. Please get up. You’re okay, Mommy. . . .”

The child’s father seemed to be in a sort of trance, gazing down at his former wife bleeding in the arms of his daughter. It was as if he were trying to make some sort of sense of what had happened.

Of what he had done.

It was obvious the poor soul had yet to understand that he was not in control of himself any longer, that a darker, more malevolent force now controlled his puppet strings.

Mathias saw his objective and went for it, reaching for the child to claim her.

The man became like a thing possessed, lashing out with his knife, slashing across Mathias’ arm.

“You will not touch the child,” the man said with a slow shake of his head, his eyes so dark they looked like dollops of tar hardening in his deep sockets. “She belongs to Dagon.”

Mathias jumped back, the sleeve of his sweat-dampened shirt cut, blood dribbling freely from the gash in his arm. He reached into his back pocket and removed the Swiss Army knife he’d used earlier to pick the lock to the building. He briefly gazed at the tool, selecting what was needed for this particular job and unfolding the five-inch blade.

“It’s not the size of the blade that matters, but how it’s used.” Delilah remembered these words of the many men who had often fought for her over the ages.

“Remember what you saw,” Delilah said aloud to inspire her champion. “It can only be that way if the child is mine.”

The words were just the catalyst required. Mathias sprang like a predatory beast, the small blade darting through the air, finding its prey multiple times, before falling back.

Carl was bleeding from many places as he maneuvered himself between his attacker and the child, who was cradling his dying wife.

Delilah was growing impatient, wishing the two would just kill each other and be done with it as she glared at her prize. She began to move around the men, as they continued their dance of death, moving closer to her objective.

If you want something done right . . .

She was close enough to speak to the child.

“Zoe,” Delilah whispered, flexing the power of her voice. “Zoe, I was a friend of your mother’s.”

The child didn’t seem to hear, hugging her mother and kissing her face and the top of her head, telling her over and over she was not dead.

“Zoe,” Delilah said, trying again, flexing her vocal muscle.

This time it worked, and she caught the child’s attention. Zoe looked up, her face flushed scarlet, her eyes swollen with tears.

“Come with me, child,” Delilah said, holding out a hand. “I’ll take you somewhere you’ll be safe.”

And as the words left her, Mathias screamed, lunging at Zoe’s father. The two stumbled backward, crashing into the classroom desks that had been pushed to the side of the room.

The screams were wild, inhuman, like two savage beasts.

Zoe became distracted, staring in terror at the battle being waged across the room from her.

“Zoe,” Delilah demanded, cautiously moving closer.

The child’s attention snapped back to her.

“Take my hand, and everything will be all right,” Delilah said as she willed the child to her.

Zoe looked about to do as Delilah wanted, when the damnable Deryn York fitfully twitched and let out a guttural moan.

Delilah rolled her eyes, furious that the bitch hadn’t yet died.

Zoe’s attention was back upon her mother.

“The specialness says I can fix her,” Zoe said, patting her mother’s hair.

“Perhaps we can,” Delilah said, “but you’re going to need to come with me before . . .”

The men thrashed upon the ground in an expanding puddle of gore. Whose blood it was exactly was not known, but Delilah guessed it was likely from them both.

“It says I have to take it back . . . take it back from the monster,” the little girl squeaked, obviously afraid.

“Then let me help you,” Delilah said. She’d dropped to her knees, sliding closer to the girl.

Close enough to grab her.

Delilah reached out, taking hold of Zoe’s wrist and attempting to draw her near. She couldn’t help herself, being this close to the force that would free her from her punishment and allow her to shape the world as she saw fit.

“You’re mine now,” the woman said.

Zoe’s eyes grew wide, and a light began to fill them, growing so intense that it illuminated the child’s entire head, making it appear on fire from the inside.

“I’ve got to take it back,” she said in a voice no longer her own. “It must be whole again.”

And there came a deafening silence, followed by a roar so loud that it could have been heard the day the universe was created.