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[series]: The Cal Leandros Series (Madhouse)
[character]: Delilah
[character history / background]: In Moonshine, Cal and Niko are recruited to steal a crown from the two-headed werewolf mafia boss Cerberus. They do this with the help of Flay, low wolf on the totem pole in the Kin hierarchy, whose son has been kidnapped. Long story short, Flay helps Cal and Niko kill Cerberus, they help Flay rescue his son, and Flay ends up being run out of town by the rest of the Kin for committing the sin of killing his Alpha. More info available here.

In Madhouse we learn that Flay had a half-sister. That’s Delilah. Because she wasn’t involved in the killing of Cerberus, Delilah gets to stay with the rest of her pack in New York, although it’s uncertain whether her status within the Kin suffered from the actions of her brother. As a member of the Kin, Delilah is mostly concerned with making a buck; however, gratitude for the rescue of her nephew in Moonshine gives her incentive to help out Niko and Cal with their investigation into the unfortunate resurrection of serial killer/cannibal/red cap Sawney Beane.

Delilah is first mentioned in the novel as relaying information to Promise on a warehouse containing a few of Sawney Beane’s victims. When Cal is injured in the resulting battle with the red cap, Delilah offers to heal him by way of licking the wound clean. She claims not to be bothered by Cal’s Auphe heritage, which is unusual for a werewolf, and after the intimate healing, leaves Cal a note proclaiming his newly formed scars “pretty”. After this encounter, Delilah is presumably well-paid for her services and disappears for a while to go back to making money the easy way: i.e. as a bouncer at a male strip club in Chelsea.

Later on, Niko and Cal show up at the club to enlist Delilah’s help taking down Sawney Beane. Delilah concludes that Sawney Beane is not Kin business but decides to help the Leandros boys again anyway. When Niko asks her why, she says only that she is “free”. My personal theory on why Delilah agreed to go against Kin policy and help Niko and Cal is that she 1) had a grudge against Cerberus for the way he treated her family as lower-class because of their impure breeding, and was glad that her brother, Cal, and Niko had killed him, 2) has an interest in Caliban, and 3) like most Kin members, has a love of cold hard cash. Delilah brings a group of other half-breed or mongrel werewolves from her pack to the second party to destroy Sawney Beane, but that attempt fails.

Eventually, Delilah shows up at the bar Cal works at to demand a kiss, and leaves just as abruptly. She shows up again when Cal is searching Morningside campus for Sawney’s new hunting grounds to demand sex, however her plans are interrupted by another murder. After helping Cal take down a couple revenants, Delilah takes Cal back to her place to give him his second sexual experience of his life. She doesn’t appear again after that in the novel; however, Cal’s statement at the end that there is “potential for something” with Delilah suggests that her character will show up again later in the series.

Delilah is a better-bred werewolf than Flay and other members of her pack, which means she can shift between a human form and a wolf form without giving herself away as supernatural. The only thing that marks her as less than pure-bred is her voice. Her vocal cords are still partly wolf when she changes, giving her a very raspy voice. When she speaks it would sound like someone with a very heavy accent, and as human-speaking is difficult for her, she’ll use short and choppy phrasing like someone just learning the language. There is evidence that Delilah is a strong fighter; the scars on her stomach—and her apparent pride in showing them off—indicate that she survived a great deal of violence in her life, which would be typical of a member of the Kin. As a werewolf, Delilah has superior speed and strength, as well as healing properties in her saliva which make her hard to kill. Basically anything a huge-ass wolf can do, Delilah can do, and that includes tearing throats out. She’s pretty handy with a knife too.

[character personality]: Like most werewolves, Delilah is very direct and blunt, not bothering to waste time with pointless niceties. If she wants something, she’ll ask for it (or, for the most part, demand it). Like the wolf she is, Delilah relishes a good fight. She disdains eating humans and would much rather hunt more challenging prey. She takes pride in her wolf heritage, even though Cerberus and the Kin Alphas have relegated her family to second-class status because of it. For Delilah, pack loyalty comes before anything else, even her loyalty to the Kin as evidenced by her tendency to go against them when it suits her.

My personal canon speculates that Cerberus made sure Delilah wouldn’t be able to bear him any more “impure” children by arranging another wolf to create the mess of scars on her abdomen, and that Delilah knew but couldn’t do anything against Cerberus herself. Not being able to bear children is a blow to her pride, but she doesn’t hide the scars, or feel ashamed of them. She will, however, take any opportunity she can to enact little revenges on the Kin for the insults dealt to her family and if that includes helping out the human and a half-Auphe that brought down Cerberus (and making a little money on the side) then that’s what she’ll do.

Although her typical lack of patience and blunt approach may make her seem less intellectual than the average person, Delilah does possess a keen insight and teasing sense of humour. She also has a fair bit of curiosity, considering her continued interest in Cal.


NOTICE: Delilah doesn't bother with typing on computers. She'll always use the voice post function, so consider any posts, comments, or replies Delilah makes to be vocal and not written/typed.

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