All Who Wander Are Lost (An Icarus Fell Novel) (10 page)

I’m not sure
what the payment had been—probably didn’t want to
know—but felt he’d taken something from me. Behind him,
the far bank had disappeared, leaving a stretch of churning water
between us and our point of departure. How-the-hell a stream could
grow into a small sea was beyond me, then I realized the answer to
my query.

Hell.

The ferryman’s
eye shifted and he stared at me for a full minute before returning
to his survey of the far shore. As much as I didn’t want to
deal with this man—this thing—it was time for answers.

“
Look
at me.” I moved again to block his view. “When will
we--”

The raft struck
something solid spilling me onto my tail bone for a second time.
Perhaps we’d hit one of the enormous koi. I righted myself and
saw the ferryman pointing past me, gnarled finger extended toward
the shore. Piper came to my side.

“
We’re
here,” she sing-songed.

The edge of the
raft made contact with the rocky shore. A few hundred yards away,
the city overtook the landscape, its buildings rising taller than
I’d thought, many reaching hundreds of stories toward the
ashen sky. Monolithic, ultra-modern slabs stood shoulder to shoulder
with cathedrals which looked like they were erected a thousand years
ago. The skyscrapers stretched the length of the shore as far as I
could see.

I opened my mouth
to ask ‘what-the-hell’ again but closed it without
posing the question. This was Hell, after all: apparently I’d
have to get used to a little strangeness.

Bruce
Blake-All Who Wander Are Lost

We trudged along
the boulevard leaving footprints in the half-inch layer of ash
covering its surface.

“
Now
what?” I looked away from the pale gray buildings to Piper;
she didn’t look at me.

“
You
keep asking me that. Aren’t you the one who wanted to come to
Hell?”

Our words bounced
from skyscraper to citadel, cathedral spire to tower, but we heard
no other sounds, saw no other prints in the dust. It seemed we had
the entire city to ourselves. I breathed deep, collecting my
thoughts, and gagged at the taste of the ash on my tongue—God
only knew what had been burned to produce it; the answer might be
beyond even His knowledge.

“
We’ve
got some souls to find.”

“
Okay.
Any ideas how to do that, Sherlock?”

I stopped and
surveyed our surroundings. Buildings rising on all sides were
surprisingly tidy and in good repair; the road stretching on
seemingly without end did so free of garbage or debris. Each side
street we came to looked exactly the same. With no real plan, I
strode to the doors of the closest hi-rise and found a glassed-in
case set on the wall to the left. The glass protected a black board
and white plastic letters.

“
Hey.
Come look at this.”

The little white
letters were arranged to form names, each one set beside a number
which presumably corresponded to an apartment number. I stared,
open-mouthed.

“
It
can’t be what it seems.”

Piper shrugged—her
favorite gesture.

“
Never
know until you try.”

There were easily a
thousand names on the list. Luckily, and somewhat unbelievably, they
were in alphabetical order. I browsed from the a’s, watching
for recognizable names, only slightly deterred by occasional missing
letters, fallen from their spots to collect in the bottom of the
case like an alphabet soup sucked dry of its broth.

I
finger-traced a path through the b’s and c’s, a few
names catching my attention—surely it couldn’t be
the
Ray
Charles—before reaching the e section and a name on the list
because of me.

“
Elizabeth
Elton,” I whispered.

Piper stepped up
beside me, her chin an inch from my shoulder.

“
Who?”

“
She
used to be my...neighbor. Father Dominic killed her.”

“
What
luck.” She clapped me on the shoulder and that small touch
sent a jolt coursing straight for my groin. “With all the
people who’ve gone to Hell, what were the chances we’d
find someone you were looking for on the first try?”

“
No
shit.” My finger traced a line from Beth’s name to the
apartment number. “It says she’s in twenty-eighteen.”

There was no buzzer
beside the board. I looked high and low, then went to the opposite
wall looking for it, watching for some secret door hiding a phone to
call up and get buzzed in.

Nothing.

“
Damn
it.” I turned to Piper still standing by the board watching me
with the amused expression she liked almost as much as shrugging. “I
don’t know how to get in.”

She tilted her head
at me and smiled, then walked the two steps to the front door,
grabbed the handle and pulled the door open.

“
Should
we try this?”

“
Smart
ass.”

She bowed her head
and swept her arm toward the open door, ushering me through. I went
sheepishly, thinking how different Piper was from Poe. When I first
met Poe, she was shy and nervous and had become only marginally less
so over the last few months. This woman was the opposite: outgoing,
playful, fun to be with. Too bad she was an angel and not a woman I
met in a bar.

We entered a
massive foyer with crimson walls. No ash covered the smooth gray
floor; our footsteps echoed up to the ceiling forty feet above.
Other than four walls, a door, a ceiling and a floor, there was
nothing—no light fixtures, no comfy places for visitors to
rest, no mailboxes. Only the elevator doors set into the far wall
broke the monotony of emptiness. I strode across the slate tile
floor, the oppression of the dark walls and floor and the dim light
weighing on me with each step. I glanced over my shoulder to make
sure Piper was following and found her two paces behind me, walking
with the quiet grace of a careful cat.

Halfway across the
lobby, I stopped.

“
Did
you hear that?”

She paused,
listening. “I don’t hear anything.”

We remained there a
few seconds, a look of concentration on my face so she’d know
I was listening. I’d thought I heard a sound like rock
scraping against rock hidden amongst the echoes of my footsteps, but
now, listening for it, I heard nothing. We waited a few seconds
longer, then I borrowed a page from Piper’s book and shrugged.

“
Guess
I’m hearing things.”

We set out again,
and after a few steps, the sound returned.

“
There
it is again,” I said without stopping this time. “Do you
hear it?”

“
No.”

She increased her
pace and looped her arm through mine. The electricity of her touch
filled me immediately, its buzz in my ears hiding any sound I may
have heard. Piper guided me—a little dazed and more than a
little aroused—to the elevator doors where she punched the
call button, then gazed up at the lighted numbers above the sliding
doors. I took the opportunity to peruse the smooth curve of her
neck, the drape of her hair across her shoulder, the fullness of her
lips. She hummed a tune at the back of her throat as she waited and
it sounded to me like the most beautiful music I’d ever heard.

The doors slid open
and she stepped through, letting go of my arm.

I crashed back to
earth or, in this case, Hell. The murmur in my bones disappeared
leaving me feeling empty, alone. She stood in the elevator facing
me; my body ached to say something to her, tell her she made me feel
like no one ever had, beg her to come back to me.

“
Are
you coming, silly?”

Her words broke the
spell. I shook my head to clear the cobwebs and dragged my sleeve
across my mouth in case my open-mouth gape left drool on my chin,
then stepped into the elevator and pushed the twenty button.

“
It
was twenty-eighteen, right?” I asked, my voice quaking
slightly.

The doors slid
closed. At first, I stood close enough to feel the heat radiating
from her hand and part of me wanted to hold it, go back to the
exotic place her touch took me. Another part knew that if I did, I
might never return. I side-stepped a little farther away as the
muzak version of Barry Manilow’s ‘Mandy’ assaulted
us from a tinny-sounding speaker hidden in the elevator’s
ceiling.

Now I know I’m
in Hell.

The trip felt like
it took an eternity, but Piper’s close proximity bringing a
light sweat to my brow may have been as much responsible for the
feeling as the torture of Mr. Manilow or some Hellish trick like our
raft ride across the River Styx. At least I didn’t have to pay
the elevator-man.

At last, the number
twenty above the door illuminated with a coinciding electronic ding.
A second later the doors slid open. I went to step out but
hesitated, peeking through the doors first.

“
Holy
shit.”

Instead of the
apartment building hallway I expected, our elevator opened on a
rough-hewn subterranean passage. Guttering torches set in sconces at
regular intervals along the walls threw flickering illumination
along the passage.

“
This
is more like what I thought Hell would be,” I said and stepped
out of the elevator.

Piper followed.
“Which way should we go?”

I glanced one way
along the hall, then the other. No signs like in a hotel or
apartment building indicated what number-range of rooms lay in which
direction. Frustrating.

“
Your
guess is as good as mine.”

“
Let’s
go this way, then,” she said gesturing to her right.

We set out down the
passage and, as we approached the first torch, I noticed the sconce
was shaped like a human arm: well-muscled, sun-bronzed, the torch
held in its fist.

Creepy. A little
cliché, but creepy.