All Who Wander Are Lost (An Icarus Fell Novel) (17 page)

“
Icarus?
Oh my God. Icarus! Those men told me you’d come. Are you here
to save me?”

His
words caught me off-guard:
those
men told me you’d come,
but
I ignored their implications for the time-being.

“
What’s
going on here?”

He glanced at the
small screen then at himself. Guilt finally made an appearance on
his face, though I’m sure being caught caused it, not his
actions. He pulled at his arms, showing me they were tied down as if
to say it wasn’t his fault. I didn’t think for a second
the ropes were meant to keep him in front of the video feed—he
obviously enjoyed watching—but to keep his hands out of his
lap. Another sickened feeling rose from my belly into my throat.

“
Help
me.”

I pulled my
uninjured arm back, hand open, fully intending to slap the man
silly, but Piper caught my wrist before I let loose, the prickling
shock of her touch interrupting me. I turned toward her.

“
This
is Hell, Icarus. The man is being punished already.”

“
Not
enough.”

“
We
can’t stay. Bring him or leave him, but we have to go.”

Piper’s
expression remained placid, neutral. She really didn’t care
whether or not we brought him. I looked back at the man lashed to
the chair and caught his eyes flickering back to me from the screen.
The urge to punch him welled up again but I lowered my arm: Piper
was right, the longer we hung around, the worse things might
potentially get. I hadn’t forgotten Tony’s comment about
‘those men’ or the way the gargoyles had kept their eyes
on us. Neither seemed a good sign.

I tried to sort
through the situation. On the one hand, I’d come here to bring
back the souls I was responsible for sending to Hell, Tony McSweeny
among them. But I didn’t expect to find this.

He coached my
son.

I struggled my
anger back into place and tried to remain logical. On our last visit
to Hell, I’d watched Beth kill her children, an act I knew
didn’t happen in the real world. Just because he was strapped
to a chair watching teenage boys undress and shower didn’t
mean he did the same thing in life.

Did it?

It would be
easier to convince myself if he didn’t keep glancing back at
the monitor.

“
Icarus,”
Piper prompted.

“
Alright.”

I untied my former
soccer coach. He flinched and sucked air in through his teeth as I
pulled the ropes away, purposely doing it in an un-gentle fashion in
case he deserved it.

“
Thank
you,” he said as he stood.

“
You
ended up in Hell because of me, Tony,” I said doing my best to
sound threatening. “I better not get you out of here to find
you really should have spent the rest of eternity dry-humping the
inside of your own jeans.”

“
You
won’t,” he said shaking his head. “I don’t
know what all this was about. Thank you.”

I shook off his
thanks and moved to the door. Piper had already opened it a crack to
peek through.

“
We
can’t go that way,” I said casting a look over my
shoulder at Tony. “Wouldn’t be right.”

“
It’s
empty.”

A quick glance at
the monitor confirmed that no boys remained in the locker room.
Removing Tony from the chair dispelled his punishment.

“
Okay.
Let’s go.”

Piper led the way
out the door and I shuffled Tony out behind her. We made it a couple
of steps out of the small office before stopping. The room we
stepped into wasn’t the locker room, but the subway platform
I’d originally expected.

And a subway train
was pulling up to the station.

“
Crap.”

Bruce
Blake-All Who Wander Are Lost

The group of people
did precious little milling for a crowd its size. Trevor stood off
to the side, separated from the group, watching them as they stared
at the unbroken stained-glass window. A wide variety of people made
up the crowd: the youngest looked to be a five-year-old strapped
into one of those dog-leash like contraptions as his mother
whispered prayers toward the miraculous glass; the oldest must have
been giving ninety a run for its money. Men, women and a number of
different ethnicities. The one thing they might have in common was
their faith—if this window survived the explosion, it must
surely be a testament to God’s power.

If they only
knew.

He only remembered
glimpses of what happened within the church’s walls as he’d
spent most of his last visit here thankfully unconscious. What he
did remember kept him awake most nights. Being fifteen and having
been party to a battle between archangels as well as having one
almost steal your soul would give anyone nightmares.

Trevor shuffled his
feet and looked away from the crowd. The yellow police tape ringing
the devastated church in a rough circle flapped in the breeze and he
had the uneasy feeling it gestured to him, beckoned. He stepped off
the sidewalk onto the damp grass and circled around to the far side,
under the branches of the oak tree, away from the miracle-seekers. A
little after seven p.m., winter’s shortened days made it fully
dark. When he reached the spot directly opposite the window, Trevor
ducked under the police tape and approached the ruins.

Chunks
of broken stone wall littered the blackened grass. He hadn’t
been here when the explosion happened, but even unconscious, he’d
felt the power of the archangels enough that the extent of the
destruction didn’t surprise him. He stepped past charred pews
and over a chunk of marble which may once have been part of the
altar, though he knew too little of religion and its trappings to
say for sure. His father always insisted on
not
going
to church. Funny he’d lost his life in this very churchyard
and Trevor came so close to losing his here, too.

Coincidence?

The rubble formed a
small mount in the middle of the former church and Trevor climbed to
the top, picking his way nimbly from stone to chunk of wood to
another stone. Each step brought a memory which couldn’t
possibly be his: Icarus fighting a man covered in scars and blood;
Poe lying unconscious amongst flames; two brawny men he knew to be
archangels locked in a battle, one with a flaming sword, one with a
sword of shadow; and finally Icarus carrying him in his arms, taking
him away.

Trevor reached the
top of the pile and gazed down in disbelief—the church
appeared whole again, each pew in place with copies of the bible and
hymnals in their places in the compartments on their backs.
Tapestries which had been burned to ash hung on the walls near the
altar, the organ sat ready to play. He looked around, taking it all
in, the re-formed building lit by a dim glow.

The pile of rubble
under Trevor’s feet had been replaced by red carpeting as he
stood in the middle of the church’s main aisle near the altar
as though awaiting the opportunity to give away the bride. He knew
each part of the church had a name—he'd watched enough TV and
seen enough movies to know that—but he never remembered the
nave from the chancel. It never seemed important.

He moved toward the
stained glass window depicting the Virgin Mary, on the other side of
which he knew a crowd watched. The only thing which looked out of
place in the church was the charred pew leaning against the wall
beneath the window. Trevor reached it and looked at it curiously.
The wood was blackened but not turned to charcoal; chunks torn from
the wood formed handholds and steps. He leaned against it, testing
the strength of the pew, and finding it solid, placed his foot in
the first divot.

The wood creaked
beneath Trevor’s weight but didn’t buckle as he climbed
toward the stained glass without knowing why he did. He wanted to
stop and chastised himself for falling prey to the same mania as the
crowd gathered on the sidewalk to see the miracle window, but each
step closer filled him with more excitement. Inexplicably, he wanted
nothing more than to be close to the woman in the glass, the Virgin
Mary.

He reached the top
of the pew and stopped, the bench wobbling slightly under him. The
window ledge looked wide enough to accommodate his feet so he
stepped onto it, bracing himself against the sides to keep his
balance. His face was on the same level with the savior’s
mother’s face, his eyes staring into hers.

Half-a-minute
passed before he felt the heat at his back. A gentle, comfortable
heat, like the sun warming his skin while lying on a beach. After a
moment, he realized a light accompanied it, growing brighter and
brighter, and a smell: apple pie, cinnamon, cloves. Trevor stood,
arms spread, and leaned his head back, basking in the glow until it
overtook him, filled him, leaving nothing in his world but light and
warmth.

†‡†

The man raised his
eyes from his whispered prayer, asking for his father’s health
back, for God to forgive him whatever he’d done and take away
the pancreatic cancer leeching the life out of him. He didn’t
know why he’d stopped mid-prayer to glance up at the miracle
window but he’d suddenly, inexplicably felt the need. He saw
from the corner of his eye that the man beside him—the one
praying for his baby grandson born prematurely—had done the
same, and the woman in front of him with her child in a harness.

They stared at the
window together, along with the rest of the congregation, as a glow
gathered behind it, dim at first, then brightening.

“
Dear
God,” the man whispered, adding to the murmur of the crowd.

The light grew
brighter, the colored panes glowed brilliantly, mesmerizing him.
Then the shadow appeared around the Virgin, an outline of a man
standing behind her, arms outstretched as if to embrace her.

“
Oh
my Lord,” the man said, louder this time.

The others added
their own exclamations.

“
The
light...”

“
It’s
so beautiful...”

“
My
God.”

“
Jesus
Christ,” the woman with her boy on a leash screeched suddenly,
startling the man. “It’s Jesus.”

The light
brightened until it blotted out the colors of the window and the
shape of the Virgin Mary, brightened until only the outline of the
man remained, a dark shadow-crucifixion framed in the window.