Where Angels Fear to Tread (24 page)

He
was
hurt. Dagon could feel the broken bones, his ruptured internal workings struggling to perform their functions to keep him alive. His skin was charred black in places; red and bubbled in others.

The power . . . the wonderful power had done this to him.

The power of God.

Dagon knew he would expire soon, the frail human armature that had become his prison, failing by the second. But he had to stay alive—long enough to claim this power as his own; to take what had belonged to another far more powerful than he, for with it, he could achieve the greatness that had eluded him.

He could sense the life radiating from Elijah, the young man's concern for his health and well-being touching, but irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

Using what strength remained in his failing body, Dagon turned his attention to the youth, grabbing him by the back of his neck with a charred and blackened hand, and yanking him down toward his hungry mouth.

The boy didn't even scream. It was almost as if he knew what was going to happen to him—that the sacrifice of his life would allow the old god to go on long enough to reclaim what had been lost so very long ago.

Dagon's teeth sank deep into Elijah's throat, and his face was suddenly awash in the spray of blood.

And life.

The deity felt himself growing stronger, and he knew it wouldn't last.

But it was enough.

He continued to gorge himself on Elijah's body, flesh and blood entering his hungry mouth and providing the fuel to keep his own ravaged body alive.

The child continued to stand where he touched her, stiff as a store mannequin, as the power of creation continued to leak from the punctures he'd put in her flesh and to swirl above her head.

Though fearing for his continued survival, he could not keep himself away, and began to crawl across the floor, dragging his shattered limbs behind him like a tail.

The child's eyes were suddenly upon him, her expression going from blank to complete revulsion.

"No! No! No! No!" she wailed, shaking her hands before her in total panic.

Flecks of divine power sprayed from her wounds, landing at her feet to form a barrier of pulsing radiance to keep him at bay.

Dagon recoiled from the brilliance, his single good eye nearly cooking in its damaged socket.

He needed the child . . . needed what thrived inside of her.

A ghostly moan close by captured Dagon's attention.

The child's father—the Judas—was still lying stunned upon the floor, but he had started to come around. Dagon saw that the child noticed this as well, a glint of expectation in her innocent eyes.

Daddy would save her.

Dagon scrabbled across the floor, reaching out and grabbing the father's ankle with charred claws, pulling him closer across the plastic-covered floor. The man struggled weakly, but he was no match for the desperate Dagon.

The dying deity crawled atop the man, hearing his screams of terror and urging him to carry on the histrionics.

The child noticed as well, peering over the growing barrier at her screaming father.

"That's it," Dagon gurgled through the fluids filling his throat. "Look here."

The child was staring now, panic on her face.

"Daddy," she said as she made a move to come closer, but the barrier stopped her with a crackling hum.

Who is the master here?
Dagon wondered. The child had been bred as a receptacle for divinity, but had the power taken control, as he had the body of Pastor Zachariah?

"Drop the barrier," Dagon commanded.

The child stared, her eyes frozen in fear.

Dagon grabbed her father's head, smashing it down on the floor, stopping him from flailing.

"Drop it!" he ordered again.

And still the child remained safely behind the wall of burning power.

Dagon made sure she was watching as he gripped her father's skull, pulling back on his head to expose the width of his throat. The ancient deity opened his mouth, showing the child he was prepared to bite.

"Daddy, no!" she shrieked, starting to whimper and cry.

"Then drop the barrier," Dagon said. He didn't have much time, the burst of strength he'd received from feeding upon his faithful disciple rapidly fading.

"Do it," he screamed, a spray of warm blood clouding the air from his outburst. His strength was failing, and it would not be long before he was no more.

Another ancient power gone from existence.

Forgotten.

He sensed the blood thrumming through the man's body under him and found himself gazing down at his throat; the carotid artery pulsing beneath the thin veneer of flesh.

Dagon didn't want to die and was desperate for as much life as he could have. He lowered his mouth, prepared to rip out the Judas' throat to sustain him for that much longer, when the child cried out.

"Don't hurt my daddy!" she screamed, stomping her foot upon the plastic-tarp-covered floor.

And as the foot landed upon the cover, the barrier was gone in a flash, the smell of burned ozone lingering in the air.

Dagon smiled, even as he was dying.

His suspicions were correct; the child did manage some amount of control over the power hidden inside her.

She had placed her hand over where his nails had punctured her flesh, and Dagon watched as she moved her frail hand away to reveal that the wounds were no longer there, a trace of red, irritated skin the only evidence that the injuries had been there at all.

Oh, to have such power
, he thought as desperation filled him.

He would be dead in a matter of moments; all the suffering he had endured since crossing over to this forsaken world, for naught.

The child moved haltingly closer, tears streaming from her eyes as she looked upon her injured father. He was awakening; moaning aloud as his head thrashed from side to side.

"Daddy," she said as she reached out to him.

Dagon could smell it on her; the blessed stink of a power he had longed for.

The power of life. The power of creation.

Weak beyond words, he laid his head down upon the parent's chest, letting the rhythmic beating of the man's heart escort him down the path of oblivion.

"Don't want to die," he slurred, the blood leaking from his mouth staining the man's shirt beneath his face.

But it was too late for begging.

Or was it?

Finding a residual strength, he managed to open his remaining eye and saw that the girl child had come closer, standing over him as she reached down to her awakening father.

Dagon could feel the power calling to him as it thrummed within the child's body. His eye fixed upon her hand as it moved across his line of sight; the tiny blue vein in her wrist pulsing with the beat of her heart, her blood filled with the stuff of God.

He did not know where he found the strength; some last bit of life's flame about to go out, and to thus bring the darkness of oblivion. But Dagon used that fire, taking its rapidly denigrating power and using it to surge up toward the child's wrist, and then sinking his hungry teeth into her tender flesh.

Gouts of her blood filled his mouth as she thrashed, clawing at the skin of his face—at his remaining eye—as she tried to remove his hold upon her.

But Dagon held fast, greedily drinking her blood; the child's pathetic cries were drowned out by the roar of creation in his ears.

Remy thanked Ashley's mother and hung up his phone.

He had to make sure Marlowe would be fed, watered, and walked. He was sure he'd hear about it from Marlowe when he returned, but at least his friend would be looked after.

He saw Samson standing by himself, deep in thought, at the back of the property, smoking a cigarette.

Remy approached, clearing his throat. It wasn't wise to sneak up on a guy with superhuman strength. "You're ready for this?" he asked.

"I'm ready to go back in there and strangle the life from her," Samson roared, nervously puffing away.

"That's not a good idea."

He grunted and continued to smoke.

"We have to think about Zoe," Remy said, attempting to justify what they were about to do. "She's completely innocent in all of this."

"I understand that," Samson said. "But I don't trust Delilah. There's shit she's leaving out."

"Then we'll have to be on our toes," Remy added.

Samson grunted again, bringing the cigarette to his mouth and sucking on the end as if there were no tomorrow. Maybe he knew something Remy didn't.

"A piece of creation," the big man said, smoke billowing from his nose and mouth. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

Remy thought for a moment, and the more he thought, the scarier it became. "It's a piece of Him," he said finally. "A piece of what makes Him God."

Samson laughed, but there was no humor in his expression. "Obviously it wasn't a part He needed too badly."

"From what I can figure out, the Creator sort of exploded when He created the heaven and the earth . . . pieces of His divinity shaping existence as we know it."

"The big bang," Samson said.

"Yeah, I guess," Remy acknowledged. "And I guess there were some unused slivers of God's big bang lying around just waiting to be found."

"Sparks from a fire," Samson grumbled, trying to visualize what it was all about.

The big man was quiet for a moment, thinking some more. "Do you think it's wise for her to have this?" he asked, turning his milky eyes toward Remy.

"No," Remy answered. "Which is why we need to keep an eye on her and make sure she uses it for exactly what she said it was for."

"To die?"

"You heard her," Remy said.

"I've heard her say a lot of things over the centuries," Samson said. "She even said she loved me more than life itself, and we saw how that turned out."

Remy heard the sounds of heavy tires on gravel and walked toward the side of the house to see multiple vans pulling up in front. These would be their rides to the airport. "The vans are here," he called over his shoulder.

One of Samson's offspring had appeared and was leading the large man back into the house.

"Gonna need some help with the not-letting-her-out-of-our-sight business," he said, pointing to his blind eyes.

"You've got it," Remy said, feeling the crawl of anticipation in his gut growing more prominent.

Deryn held the back door open for Samson and his son, asking the strongman if he had any cigarettes to spare.

She looked a little shell-shocked, but was holding up better than expected. It was one of the things Remy admired most about humanity—the ability to accept and adapt to the most insane situations.

Deryn saw him and smiled as she lit up her cigarette.

"Are you all right?" he asked her.

She nodded through a cloud of smoke as she shook out the match, letting it drop to the ground.

"I'm going to get my daughter back," she said. "I'll be fine."

"You really shouldn't be going," Remy told her. "Let me handle it from here. I'll bring Zoe back."

Deryn sucked on the end of her smoke.

"Can't do that," she said. "Delilah says I have a connection to her, and you need me to find her. I have to go."

"I'm sure there are other ways we could—"

"Delilah says I have to go," Deryn interrupted forcefully.

"I wouldn't believe everything Delilah has to say."

"But I can't afford not to believe her," the woman explained. "I'll do anything to get my daughter back."

"It might not be safe," Remy said, knowing the words were useless, but he had to try.

"Then I'll just need to be extra careful," she said as she finished her cigarette, not giving him the opportunity to attempt to convince her otherwise.

And soon he was standing there alone with his thoughts, that awful feeling of dread anticipation in his gut.

It was going to be there for a while.

Poole had never imagined the power of a mother's love.

He barely thought of his own mother and, in fact, seldom thought of her as a mother at all; an incubator was more like it. It was as if she'd forgotten he even existed as soon as he was ejected from her icy womb.

Poole's first memories were indifference, annoyance, and disgust. He had never known his father. As a child, Poole had been left in the care of neighbors in the working-class English village, while his mother, whom he came to know as Eunice, worked two jobs—one at a textiles factory and the other at the local pub, where she had been a waitress.

He guessed there was some form of attachment there, between him and her. She did provide him with food, and clothes and a roof over his head, but that pretty much had been it. As he'd grown older, they'd become more like roommates.

By the time he was thirteen, his gift had kicked in, and being the thoughtful, independent child he had been shaped into, he set out on his own, using the unique abilities he'd been born with to make his fortune in the world.

Sitting strapped into his seat aboard the private jet given to Delilah by one of her myriad and wealthy followers, Clifton Poole basked in the love of a mother for her child, the feelings left over from his bond with Deryn York, while wondering why his own mother had never loved him.

He glanced over to the seat beside him, reaching across to make sure the seat belt was fastened tightly across the child-shaped metal statue. He'd grown quite attached to the vessel, and he wondered if his own love could ever be as strong as Deryn York's.

The container secured, Poole let his fingers again run over its smooth surface, closing his eyes to the images that flooded his mind.

The power that Delilah had searched for had blocked his ability to locate it from every angle, but since the child's mother had added her own special magick, he was able to see exactly where the power had gone.

It was a marvelous feeling, traveling across thousands of miles without even leaving his seat, and he could not help himself from checking in on the child—and the power that resided within her—yet again.

The last time he'd checked, Zoe had been asleep in her father's lap, at some backwater location in West Virginia. Both he and the child's mother had eventually been able to find it on the map, and this had made his mistress very happy.