Where Angels Fear to Tread

CHAPTER THREE

Remy knew it was going to be one of those days.

“It’s hot as Hell in there,” the man from McNulty Heating and Cooling warned as he held open the front door to Remy’s office building.

He was short and a little fat. The front of his light blue shirt was stained with grease, his dark navy work pants powdered with dust.

“Let me guess,” Remy said, passing through the foyer. “The air-conditioning is broken.”

The repairman laughed. “You must be the detective.” He pointed at the building registry hanging on the wall in the lobby.

“Bingo! Any idea when it’ll be fixed?” Remy asked, more out of curiosity than anything. He really wasn’t affected by temperature, be it hot or cold.

The McNulty guy smiled, shaking his head. “Haven’t a clue. We’re gonna have to order some parts—could take a few days.”

Another McNulty employee, a disgruntled look on his face, came up from the building’s basement.

“What’s the verdict?” the first asked.

“Put a fuckin’ bullet in it,” he grunted. “Gonna need a whole new unit.” He kept right on walking through the doorway and out to a van parked in front of the building.

“There you have it,” Remy’s new friend said with a shrug.

“Guess so.” Remy turned toward the stairs.

“What, you’re still going up?” the repairman asked from the doorway.

“Yeah, probably push some papers around and take an early lunch.”

“Better you than me,” the man said, letting the door close as he left to join his partner. “It’s gonna be hot as Hell up there.”

Remy continued up the stairs to his office, letting the man’s words bounce around inside his skull. He was tempted to explain that Hell was actually a place of extremes—of both intense heat and numbing cold—but he doubted the repairman would have really much cared, and then of course, he would want to know how Remy knew so much about the infernal realm.

Why, I was just there on business, he imagined saying.

He chuckled out loud and unlocked his office door. But still he couldn’t help wondering what was happening in Hell. After usurping Heaven’s power there, the Son of the Morning had begun to reshape the realm. What had once been prison to those who had followed him in his rebellion against Heaven was slowly becoming Lucifer’s twisted version of the Eternal Realm. And how exactly did Heaven plan on dealing with that?

Remy shook his head. Those were matters of the damned and the divine, with humanity caught square in the middle.

He stepped into his office and realized the air-conditioning repairman had been right. It was stifling in the room. He closed the door and went directly to the window, opening it wide in the hope of catching a breeze to air out the stale, musty smell.

Then he checked his phone for messages and, finding none, decided to spend the morning working on invoices and paying some bills. But first there was a mighty need for coffee.

He had just filled the machine and set the carafe to collect the elixir of life, when there came a knock at the door and a woman cautiously entered the office.

“Hi,” Remy said cheerfully, moving toward her in greeting. “May I help you?”

The woman was wearing a dungaree jacket and skirt, and a bright red T-shirt. She was about five foot six, with bleached blond hair, and looked at first to be in her late thirties, although as Remy drew closer, he realized her eyes didn’t seem as old as she appeared.

The woman closed the door behind her, nervously moving her bag from one shoulder to the other.

“Umm,” she said, uncertainty in her tone. “You’re Remy Chandler, right? The private investigator?”

“Yes, I am,” Remy said, smiling kindly. The woman looked about to snap. “Is there something I can do for you, Ms. . . . ?”

“York,” the woman replied, her sandaled feet scuffing across the hardwood floor as she stepped farther into the room and extended her hand toward him. “Deryn York.”

Remy shook the woman’s warm and clammy hand.

“Why don’t you have a seat, Ms. York.” He directed her toward the chair in front of his desk, then headed back for the coffeepot.

“Coffee?” he asked her. “I’ve just made it.”

“Yes, thank you,” she said, pulling at the front of her skirt so it just about touched her knees.

Remy realized he had only one clean mug, the other one being sort of dusty.

“Let me just rinse this out,” he said, going to the tiny bathroom across the room. “It’s really warm out there today,” he said, raising his voice over the water in the sink.

“Yeah,” she answered, “hot as Hell.”

Y’know, Hell is a place of extremes. . . .

“It certainly is,” he replied instead as he left the bathroom. “How do you like your coffee?”

“Oh, just sugar, please.”

“How many?” he asked, pouring her a cup, and placing it on the edge of the desk in front of her. He went around his desk and opened the center drawer where he’d recently seen a few packets.

“Do you have six?” she asked.

“Six?”

She smiled self-consciously and shrugged. “I like it really sweet.”

Remy counted the packets in his drawer. “I only have five,” he told her.

“That’s fine,” she said. “Five should be good.”

He set down the sugar packets. “Here you go,” he said.

“Thank you.” She immediately ripped open the packets one after another, pouring their contents into the dark brown liquid.

“So, Ms. York,” Remy said, sitting down in his chair and taking a sip from his mug with the picture of a black Labrador retriever, “what can I do for you?”

She sipped her own coffee and made a face. Obviously it wasn’t sweet enough.

“I called your home last night,” she said, setting the mug carefully down on the edge of his desk, “but I didn’t leave a name . . . or much of a message really.” She laughed nervously.

“I thought that might have been you,” Remy said.

“Yeah, I’m sorry. I really didn’t know what to say, and I had no intention of even coming here, but . . .”

“But here you are,” Remy finished for her.

“Exactly,” she responded. “You’re all I have left . . . my last resort.”

“Okay then.” Remy grabbed a pad of paper and a pen. “What’s brought you here, Deryn York?”

She took another sip of coffee, perhaps to fortify herself, before starting to speak.

“My daughter,” she said, her eyes becoming misty. “My daughter, Zoe.”

“All right,” Remy encouraged her. “Take your time and tell me what happened.” He was trying to make her feel comfortable; the tension was spilling off her in waves. “Are you from this area?”

Deryn shook her head. “Originally I’m from South Carolina, but we moved to Florida about five years ago.”

“You and your daughter?” he probed.

“And my husband,” she added, reaching for the coffee again. “We’ve since separated, but I can’t seem to get rid of him. He insisted on coming here with Zoe and me, even though I didn’t want him to.”

“So you’ve moved here from Florida?”

“Not permanently,” she quickly corrected. “I hate the cold, but I heard the best doctors are here, so I didn’t really have a choice. As soon as they figure out what’s wrong with Zoe, we’ll go right back home.”

Remy nodded, taking a drink of his coffee. “Your daughter is sick then?”

Deryn stared down into the contents of her mug. “The doctors in Florida say she’s probably autistic,” she explained quietly, then looked up at Remy. “But Carl wanted to be sure, and he said the best doctors are here. He’s from here originally.”

“Where were you taking her?”

“Franciscan Hospital for Children.” She stopped, reaching down into her bag and removing a pack of cigarettes. Without even asking Remy if it was okay, she placed one between her lips and lit it with a disposable lighter.

“I can’t believe how fucking stupid I was,” she said, dropping the lighter and package of smokes back into her bag. “Oh, is this all right?” she asked, suddenly conscious of what she was doing.

“It’s fine,” Remy said, not wanting to upset her. They were finally getting someplace, and he didn’t want to cancel the momentum. “Why do you say you were stupid?”

“Because I trusted him,” she said angrily. “I let my guard down.” Deryn feverishly puffed on the cigarette, forming a toxic cloud around her head in the too-warm office. “I wasn’t feeling well, so I stayed at the hotel and let Carl take Zoe to an appointment. And that’s the last time I saw them. It’s been six days.” Deryn choked back a sob, bringing a hand to her mouth.

“There hasn’t been any contact with Carl since he took Zoe?” Remy asked.

“No,” she said miserably, finishing the smoke and dropping the butt into her coffee mug where it hissed faintly.

“Have you contacted the police?”

“Yes, once I realized what the son of a bitch had done. There’s a warrant out for his arrest.”

“And you have no idea where he might have taken your daughter?”

“I don’t have a clue.”

Remy stood and grabbed his mug. “Would you like another cup? I can rinse yours out.”

“No, no thanks,” she said with a nervous shake of her head. “I’m good.”

Remy refilled his cup and returned to his desk. “So tell me about your relationship with Carl,” he began. “Was it an amicable split or . . .”

“We only stayed together as long as we did because of Zoe,” Deryn explained. “We thought a baby would help us, but with her being different and all . . .” Her voice trailed off and she looked as though she had the weight of the world upon her shoulders.

“Does Carl have any history of violence?” Remy asked. “He wouldn’t want to cause Zoe any harm, would he?”

“Oh no,” she said quickly. “Carl really is basically a good guy. We both had kind of screwed-up childhoods, but we managed to get beyond that. We were good parents, Mr. Chandler.”

“Except that Carl has taken your daughter.”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. “But maybe if I had paid better attention, this could all have been avoided.”

“Ms. York, you can’t beat yourself up about—”

“I need to show you something, Mr. Chandler,” Deryn interrupted, pulling her bag up onto her lap.

Remy leaned forward, curious, as she withdrew a handful of folded pieces of construction paper from inside the bag. Carefully she unfolded them, looking at each before handing them to Remy.

He looked at the first. It was obviously a child’s drawing, done in crayon, crudely depicting a little girl and a man leaving what appeared to be a hospital. The next picture was of the same girl and man, only they were in a car. The man was in the front seat, driving, while the child stared out the back window, yellow circles beneath her eyes—probably falling tears, Remy guessed.

“Zoe did these?” he asked, looking up at Deryn.

She nodded. “About three weeks ago.”

He was looking at the drawing again when the woman’s words permeated his brain. “Three weeks ago?” he repeated. “So your husband must have been preparing her for this?” He waited as Deryn shook her head no.

“She drew those pictures without any knowledge of what her father was going to do,” the woman explained. “But she knew he was going to take her, Mr. Chandler, just like she knew I would be coming to see you.”

Deryn leaned forward and handed him one last drawing.

Remy’s eyes widened in surprise as he studied it. Zoe had drawn a childlike depiction of the front entrance to his brownstone, a person standing in front with a black dog on a leash. He was certain the person was himself—the feathered wings were a dead giveaway—and, moreover, floating in the air, written in a small child’s handwriting, were his address and telephone number.

Mathias stopped the Range Rover halfway down the dirt path, just close enough to see the bungalow ahead.

Poole had eventually proven his worth, using information he derived by touching the Vietnamese vessel, as well as extensive maps of the entire world. According to the Hound, Delilah’s prize would be found here, in Palatka, Florida, of all places.

It wasn’t exactly a place that Mathias imagined finding an object that could quite easily change the course of the world, but perhaps that was the point—no ancient temples surrounded by worshippers ready to die in its defense; instead, a run-down bungalow in the backwaters of Florida.

Ingenious.

He removed the Glock pistol from the holster underneath his arm and chambered a round.

“Are we ready?” he asked the other four men on his team.

They grunted their responses as each prepared his own weapons. Febonio, Yelverton, and Wallace, in the backseat, put rounds in the chambers of their hand weapons, while Cole, in the front passenger seat, flipped off the safety of his Mac 10 semiautomatic machine gun.

Mathias hoped it would be enough. They had no idea what they were walking into.

“Let’s go,” he said, turning off the engine and stepping out into the tropical heat.

Mathias led the way up the rocky dirt path. A mutt tied to a rusting swing in a backyard overrun with weeds began to bark ferociously at their approach, and Mathias was tempted to put a bullet in the mangy beast. But they had to appear harmless; no sense in alerting those inside of potential danger.

As they neared the falling-down porch, he motioned his men to step back out of the line of sight and walked up the four cracked concrete steps to the front door. He could hear the sounds of a television from inside.

He took a quick glance over his shoulder to be sure his team was in position, then rapped loudly on the dented, rusted aluminum door.

Mathias waited, listening to the sounds from inside. The volume on the television went down, and that was his cue to knock again.

Now he could hear muffled voices coming from inside—a man, a woman, and at least one child. The door suddenly opened a crack, and half a face peered out, glaring at him over a short length of chain.

“Yeah?”

Mathias could smell the stink of beer wafting from the man’s breath. “Hi,” he said with his biggest, fakest, nice-guy smile. “Is this thirty-seven Nautical Way?” he asked, reading from a wrinkled piece of scrap paper he pulled from his jacket pocket.

“Who wants to know?” the man asked.

He could hear the woman in the background whispering. A child started to cry, and she instantly barked for it to shut up.

A mother after his own heart.

“I’m from Destination Delivery, and I have a certified letter for thirty-seven Nautical,” Mathias said, pretending to reach inside his jacket for the envelope.

“What is it?” the man demanded.

“I don’t know, but if you want to sign for it, you can see for yourself,” Mathias said, wearing his mask of harmlessness.

The door slammed closed and Mathias could hear the man and woman talking again. Then came the sound of the chain being moved and the door opened wide to reveal a scruffy middle-aged man wearing shorts and a sweat-stained T-shirt, a filthy NASCAR hat perched atop his head, with long straggly hair like straw creeping out from beneath.

“I’m the resident,” he said.

He held out a filthy hand, but instead of holding an envelope, Mathias had withdrawn his Glock, which he was pointing at the man’s face.

“Sorry,” he said with a sneer. “Guess I don’t have a certified letter after all, but I do have this loaded gun.”

The man’s hands flew into the air. “What the fuck!” he exclaimed, slowly backing away from the door.

Mathias gestured for Febonio and Wallace to follow him inside, leaving Cole and Yelverton to watch the perimeter.

The woman immediately began to screech as Mathias closed the door behind him with his foot.

“What the fuck do you want? Get the fuck out of here!” she hollered. The child was crying all the louder now; a little boy or girl—Mathias couldn’t tell—no older than two.

Febonio pointed his weapon at the child clutching at its mother’s leg and brought a nicotine-stained finger to his lips. “Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

“Listen, I don’t know what you want, but if you see it, take it,” the man said. “We don’t even live here.”

Mathias was taken aback. “You don’t live here?”

“Naw,” the man said. “Friends of my old lady here do. . . . They asked us to watch the place while they’re away.”

Mathias had been in places of unnatural power before, and this didn’t feel like one of them. Had Poole screwed up? he wondered. He looked around. The place was certainly nothing special from what he could see.

Wallace came around a corner, finished with checking the place out.

“Anything out of the ordinary?” Mathias asked.

The man shook his blocky head. “Looks like a fucking pigsty to me.”

“What do you want?” the woman asked again, her voice shaking with fear and anger. She had picked up the crying child and was cradling it in her arms.

Mathias ignored the question, pulling his phone from his pocket. He had other things to concern himself with right now, such as the possibility of disappointing his mistress.

She didn’t like to be disappointed, and he so hated to be the one to give her bad news.

Delilah was waiting for the phone to ring.

She sat in the backseat of another Range Rover, trying not to stare at the phone on the seat between her and Clifton Poole. But no matter where she looked, her eyes always returned to the phone lying silently beside her.

If only Poole could be so silent.

The Hound muttered incessantly, rocking back and forth, still clutching the infant-shaped vessel that had once contained her prize. Ever since she had forced him to lay his hands upon it, he had refused to let it go.

Poole had been driven nearly mad by his contact with the vessel, but he still seemed to be useful. Between bouts of screaming and crying, he had been able to tell that the object, which had been stored within the container of metal, was very aware that they, or rather she, was looking for it, and was doing everything in its power to hide its trail.

But Poole was good, very good, and was able to lift a reading even though the object’s vast amount of power threatened to utterly destroy his mind.

Delilah hoped he would live long enough to receive the funds that were owed him for his services. He certainly was earning them.

He had demanded maps, and she had obliged him, laying map after map of the entire charted world down upon the floor before him. And after some time, and a great deal of pain, the Hound had found what he believed to be the location of her precious heart’s desire, and it had brought them here, to the United States.

To Palatka, Florida.

The phone suddenly rang and she gasped, picking it up and quickly placing it against her ear.

“Did you find it?” she asked immediately.

“Not exactly,” Mathias replied, and Delilah felt the world drop out from beneath her.

“What do you mean, not exactly?” she snarled, glaring at Poole. She was tempted to order him to stop breathing; that would certainly fix him for his incompetence.

“Perhaps you should come inside,” Mathias suggested. “And bring Poole along.”

Delilah broke the connection, letting the phone drop from her hand.

“Poole,” she said.

The man immediately stiffened, his gaze slowly turning toward her.

“You’re coming with me,” she commanded.

The driver was already out of the truck and opening her door to the sweltering Florida air.

Poole followed, still clutching the metal container forged in the shape of a child, still mumbling beneath his breath, as he trailed his mistress up the overgrown path to the dilapidated house.

Mathias averted his gaze.

“I’m sorry, mistress,” he said.

Delilah strode into the room, her eyes scanning the paltry location.

A woman held a child in her arms, placating the little boy with animal cracker after animal cracker. “Who are you people?” the mother demanded. “Is this about the weed Ron sold? Because if it is . . .”

“Janie, shut your fucking yap,” the filthy man said, scowling.

“Be quiet,” Delilah snapped, and Ron was compelled to shut his mouth at once. She then looked back to the woman.

The child smiled warmly, offering Delilah one of his half-eaten treats.

She approached the mother and child, her anger and disappointment partially dissipating with the child’s attention.

“I used to have a little boy just your age,” she told the little one, reaching out to stroke the side of his head. “He died of pox while I cradled his tiny body in my arms,” Delilah continued, remembering in a violent slash of recollection the death of one of her sons.

Janie twisted her child away from Delilah’s affections, her eyes filled with a mother’s rage. “Don’t you touch him.”

Delilah remembered that rage. She had used it to fuel her survival through the ages.

And there was so much of it, so much pain.

She often wondered how much damage her pain would do if it were somehow turned into a weapon and unleashed upon the world.

“Have Poole come in,” she said, turning away and focusing on Mathias.

Her head of security went to the door and opened it. “Bring the Hound,” he said.

Yelverton dragged the wild-eyed man through the doorway. He looked around, his head bobbing as his entire body began to twitch.

“What the fuck’s wrong with him?” Ron asked.

The little boy started to laugh, clapping his cookie-covered hands together as Poole dropped violently to the floor, the vessel clattering from his grasp.

Mathias moved to haul the man up, but Delilah stopped him.

“Leave him,” she commanded, watching as Poole thrashed and bucked upon the floor.

“Maybe we should call 911 or something,” Ron offered, fear in his eyes. “Looks like the poor bastard’s having a fit.”

In a way the man was correct; Poole was indeed having some kind of fit as his body attempted to lock on to traces of Delilah’s prize, and by his reaction, it had most definitely been here.

“What is it, Poole?” she asked, striding closer as he lay on the floor moaning, his hands reaching for the vessel.

“Hiding,” the man croaked, dragging himself toward the metal container. “Trying so hard . . . trying so hard to mask its trail . . . but it was here. . . .”

His hands finally closed around the vessel, and he fought to stand.

“It was here,” he screamed again, hurling himself across the house toward a cabinet in the corner. He smashed the panes of glass in the cabinet door, scattering the gaudy knickknacks displayed inside.

“It was here,” he said again, and again, his eyes scanning the contents of the cabinet.

It had become deathly silent in the room; all eyes were riveted on the crazy man as he stood before the cabinet. Holding the vessel beneath one arm, he reached inside and fumbled about.

“It was here.”

He stumbled backward, his eyes darting here and there.

“I can . . . I can hear it. . . . I can . . .”

His eyes fell upon a drawer just below the cabinet door. He reached out and yanked it open. There was all manner of refuse inside, from take-out menus to old calendars, but that wasn’t what the Hound was searching for.

It wasn’t what was speaking to him.

And then the man became very still, his hand deep inside the drawer.

“What is it, Poole?” Delilah asked. “Did you find something?”

He turned toward her, an insane look upon his pale features. Slowly he withdrew his hand, clutching a colorful pamphlet.

“There it is,” he said over and over again, his body slumping as he held out the paper. “There it is.”

Delilah strode toward him and took it. It was an informational flyer about Franciscan Hospital for Children in Boston.

“Do you know what this is?” Delilah turned to the woman holding the child.

“It’s the hospital where Deryn and Carl took their kid,” Janie said.

“Deryn and Carl,” Delilah repeated.

“They’re the ones who really live here,” Ron said. “We’re just house-sitting ’til they get back.

“And they’re still in Boston?” Delilah asked.

Janie nodded. “Why? Who are you fucking people anyway?”

“Janie, shut up,” Ron said, rising from his chair.

“Don’t you fucking tell me to shut up,” Janie shrieked. “I want to know who they think they are coming in here and pulling guns on me and my kid and . . .”

Their bickering annoyed Delilah, distracting her from the excitement of what she’d just learned.

“Both of you be quiet,” she said, rubbing her brow with a perfectly manicured hand.

Janie and Ron were silent, and Delilah could see the deep, primal fear in their eyes as they struggled to understand why they suddenly couldn’t speak.

“Much better,” Delilah said, turning her attention back to the pamphlet. “So Deryn and Carl are in Boston, and they’ve taken their child here . . . and my prize?”

Poole nodded. “Yes, it’s there. It’s there with the child.”

She then looked at her soldiers, who watched her with cautious eyes. “This is good,” she said with a wide smile that was returned by each of the mercenaries. She showed them the pamphlet. “This is where I’ll be going next,” she added.

She glanced back at Ron and Janie, and their little boy smiled at her. Her heart practically melted. She turned and held out her hands to him, and he did the same, leaning forward in his mother’s arms.

Janie instantly reacted, pulling her child back.

This made Delilah angry.

“Give him to me,” she commanded.

And though it was apparently excruciating to do so, Janie handed the baby boy to her.

The child was laughing, playing with the gold chains that hung around Delilah’s neck. She had no idea what his name was, but she really didn’t care. It didn’t matter anymore. She’d decided to keep him and give him an entirely new name.

“I think I’ll call you Maximilian,” she said, bouncing the boy in her arms. “Max . . . Do you like that name?”

Janie let out an animal-like moan, throwing herself toward Delilah and her child.

“Come no closer,” Delilah bellowed, stopping the woman in midstride.

“I’m going to give him a better life,” she explained. “A much better existence than anything you and that hopeless wretch of a father could provide for him.”

The woman’s face twisted as she struggled to speak.

“Go ahead,” Delilah said. “You can thank me if you like.”

“You fucking bitch,” Janie screamed from the very depths of her soul. “Give me back my son.”

How ungrateful and rude, Delilah thought.

“Your old mother has quite the filthy mouth, doesn’t she, Max,” Delilah said as the child continued to squeal happily, grabbing at her chains.

“I think it’s time for Ron to put himself to good use,” she said, her cold gaze falling upon the man in the NASCAR hat.

“Kill her,” Delilah said with a sly smile. “And don’t tell me you’ve never wanted to.”

The weak-willed were always the easiest to manipulate. Ron didn’t even hesitate. He lunged forward and wrapped his strong hands around Janie’s throat.

“That’s it,” Delilah said, bouncing the child who was now watching his father kill his mother. “This is how Daddy shows how much he loves your old mommy,” she said in a soft voice. She kissed the top of Max’s head as Ron drove a thrashing Janie to the floor of the living room.

Ron was moaning now, trying to stop himself, but he had a better chance of holding back a tidal wave than trying to defy Delilah.

“Are we ready to go to Boston?” she asked the baby in her sweetest voice. The child cooed excitedly, arms flapping, as Delilah glanced at Mathias and headed for the door.

She stopped as she heard a pitiful cry behind her, then turned to see a pathetic Ron, kneeling beside the strangled body of his wife, his cheeks flushed from the exertion of murder.

“No,” he managed, reaching out for his child.

She smiled at him, holding the baby she called Max all the closer. “He’s mine now,” she said, kissing the side of the child’s head. “And when we’re gone, I want you to burn this place.” She looked about the disheveled interior with a scowl, then turned and headed out the door that Mathias held open. “Burn it to the ground.”

She was singing a Mesopotamian lullaby to her new baby when the house at the end of the path exploded, fingers of fire and thick black smoke reaching up into the sky in a futile attempt to blot out the bright Florida sun.