Where Angels Fear to Tread Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  Praise for the Remy Chandler Novels

  Dancing on the Head of a Pin

  “A powerful urban fantasy.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  A Kiss Before the Apocalypse

  “The most inventive novel you’ll buy this year . . . a hard-boiled noir fantasy by turns funny, unsettling, and heartbreaking. This is the story Sniegoski was born to write, and a character I can’t wait to see again.”

  —Christopher Golden, bestselling author of The Lost Ones

  “Tightly focused and deftly handled, [A Kiss Before the Apocalypse] covers familiar ground in entertaining new ways. . . . Fans of urban fantasy and classic detective stories will enjoy this smart and playful story.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “This reviewer prays there will be more novels starring Remy. . . . The audience will believe he is on Earth for a reason as he does great things for humanity. This heart-wrenching, beautiful urban fantasy will grip readers with its potent emotional fervor.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “It’s kind of refreshing to see the holy side represented. . . . Fans of urban fantasy with a new twist are likely to enjoy Sniegoski’s latest venture into that realm between humanity and angels.”

  —SFRevu

  “Blurring the lines between good and evil, A Kiss Before the Apocalypse will keep readers riveted until the very end. This is an emotional journey that’s sometimes filled with sadness, but once it begins, you won’t want to walk away. Mr. Sniegoski defines the hero in a way that makes him very real and thoroughly human. . . . Fast moving, well written, and wonderfully enchanting, this is one that fantasy readers won’t want to miss.”

  —Darque Reviews

  “A fascinating look at religion and humanity from a different point of view. Mr. Sniegoski has written a compelling story of what emotion can do to even the most divine creatures. A Kiss Before the Apocalypse is not a book that one can pick up and put down easily. Once you start, you will not want to put it down until you are finished.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “An exciting, page-turning mystery with the bonus of the popular paranormal aspects as well. This author has created a compelling central character with both human and angelic features, which allows the reader to become completely immersed in the story and the tension as it builds. The suspense alone leaves the reader anxious to come back for more. The story builds to a thrilling, edge-of-your-seat, nail-biting conclusion and will leave you wanting to read more of this character and certainly more of this author.”

  —Affaire de Coeur

  “An intriguing, amazing story about a person torn between trying to live as a human while hiding his angel side as well. Remy was a very interesting, complex main character. . . . A funny yet sometimes heartbreaking story, and I had a wonderful time reading it.”

  —Night Owl Romance

  ALSO BY THOMAS E . SNIEGOSKI

  A Kiss Before the Apocalypse

  Dancing on the Head of a Pin

  ROC

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

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  First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, March 2010

  Copyright Š Thomas E. Sniegoski, 2010

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Sniegoski, Tom.

  Where angels fear to tread : a Remy Chandler novel / by Thomas E. Sniegoski.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-18585-8

  1. Private investigators—Fiction. 2. Angels—Fiction. 3. Boston (Mass.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3619.N537W47 2010

  813’.6—dc22

  2009039826

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

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  For Rusty, Kenn, and Remy—

  old friends and the new

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  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.

  PROLOGUE

  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 lon
g 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.

  “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.