All Who Wander Are Lost (An Icarus Fell Novel) (34 page)

“
That
wasn’t your fault.”

A path through the
crowd of milling souls cleared before us so readily, a cynic like me
might have thought we were being herded. I looked up and saw a group
of souls ahead of us gathered around something.

“
Azrael
didn’t force himself on me, Icarus. I could have refused but
didn’t. I’m where I should be.”

“
But
you have to come with me.”

“
I
can’t. For you to take a soul, one must replace it. Who would
you leave? Trevor?”

“
I...”

I didn’t have
an answer. I’d come to Hell to rescue souls, not trade them.
Who was I to decide who should replace someone else in Hell? I
suddenly felt relieved I didn’t bring Tony McSweeny back. The
thought of trading for a seeming pedophile churned my stomach.

‘
For
you to take a soul, one must replace it.’

The words bounced
around my head looking for a place to grab on so I could understand
their impact. It took a few seconds; my mind can be a slippery slope
at the best of times. When they finally found purchase, they brought
a memory of the crowd I’d seen before Marty and Todd found me,
the woman condemned to public-speaking-Hell. But it wasn’t
her, it was the face in the crowd.

Detective
Williams.

I’d dropped
him off to be taken to Heaven, yet saw him amongst the crowd in
Hell. I didn’t have time to think it through at the time—Marty
and Todd’s stinking bag being yanked over my head distracted
me from discerning a reason for his presence—but my mother’s
words told the truth of it.

When I brought
Elizabeth Elton back, Hell took the detective as payment.

Great. First I
kill the guy, then I get him condemned. Nice work.

“
Shit.”

We drew closer to
the group, close enough I saw they were gathered around another
person, jostling to get close. The path to them lay clear before us,
each side lined with more lost souls like well-wishers at a
ticker-tape parade or the receiving line at a wedding.

“
I
must stay here, Icarus, but others need you.”

“
Ric.”

She gestured toward
the group of souls shuffling and circling twenty feet away and let
her arm slip from mine. I stepped forward, looking at the faces, but
I recognized none of them.

“
What
do you mean?” I asked looking back at her. “Who needs
me?”

She
directed me on a route around the small mob. As we came around, I
saw who the souls were elbowing each other aside to get to:
Orlando
Albert.

In
life, he’d been my supplier, and even after Father Dominic
killed him during his murderous spree to cleanse the earth of
everyone I’d ever known—the reason I’d come to
Hell to recover souls—he showed up with drugs when I’d
sunk to my lowest. If not for whoever pulled me out of that
alleyway—a person
not
my
guardian angel—I’d likely still be slouched in the grime
doing anything to score more dope. Or, more likely, I’d be
dead. Deader, I mean. Really dead.

The rickety-looking
stool supporting Orlando creaked as he turned to face one of the
lost souls who stepped in front of him, rolled up his sleeve and
offered his bare arm. In response, Orlando reached into a doctor’s
bag on the ground by his feet and pulled out a syringe. He stuck the
needle into the lost one’s arm and depressed the plunger.
Apparently Mr. Albert’s Hell and his life bore a striking
resemblance.

The lost soul
leaned forward, bit off Orlando’s ear, then stumbled away.

Okay, maybe a
little different.

Orlando watched the
man he’d injected as he teetered on unsteady feet. I could
identify—Orlando always provided good stuff and it
occasionally affected me the same way, at least up until the point
when the soul bent at the waist and spewed a gush of vomit onto the
ground.

I grimaced. The
soul heaved again and puke splashed in the dirt. My own stomach did
a small back flip as the smell wafted to where we stood. My mother
made a small gulping sound at the back of her throat.

The soul vomited
again and again. After the fourth time, I noticed his skin was
tightening across his bones with each retch, turning him from a
desperately lost but otherwise normal looking man to Vietnam
prisoner-of-war physique in a matter of five heaves. One more made
him a skeleton with skin. The seventh time he puked, it looked to be
his heart he threw up, and his desiccated body folded to the ground.

The next soul
stepped up, arm exposed, and Orlando obliged with another injection.
The woman who received his wares took a bite out of his forearm,
then turned and wandered toward us, apparently handling the drugs
better than her friend. As she came close, blood began running first
from her nose, then her eyes. Blood streamed down her cheeks, ran
from her ears. Blood soaked her pants, dripped from her fingertips.
Every possible opening in her body, and a few improbable ones,
flowed with blood until she finally stumbled and fell at my feet,
blood spattering my shoes.

I looked up and my
eyes met Orlando’s.

“
Icarus?
Icarus Fell? Is that you?”

I had the
ridiculous urge to look over my shoulder as if he’d directed
his comments to someone else. Instead, I stared at him,
half-mesmerized by his missing ear, the bite out of his forearm, the
bag of drugs.

He stood, grabbed
the bag, and came toward me.

“
That
is you, Icarus.”

“
Ric,”
I conceded grudgingly.

“
What
are you doing here?”

I shook my head and
shrugged as if I didn’t know the answer. He raised an eyebrow
like he didn’t buy it and approached close enough his sweet
odor of stale sweat wafted to my nostrils, overpowering the pukey
stench his customer left behind.

“
Orlando.
Good to see you.”

A lie. I didn’t
extend my hand. Good things never happened when Orlando Albert
showed up in my life. He’d been one of the architects of my
life’s ruin; no reason to think it would be different in Hell.

He looked from my
face to someone in the crowd of souls and back again. His fingers
scratched his stubbly chin and he took another step closer, tilted
his head like a dog deciphering his master’s command.

“
I
saw you in the alley, you know.”

My casual survey of
him morphed into a glare.

“
He
sent me to give you drugs. I fed you enough to kill a horse.”

The hair at the
base of my head prickled. “Who sent you?”

“
You
should be dead. You don’t look dead.”

“
Who
sent you to give me drugs?”

A look of
realization crossed his face. He stepped forward, grabbing me by
both shoulders.

“
You’re
alive,” he said in a husky whisper. “You’re in
Hell, but you’re alive.”

His stink
overpowered me, clawed its way up my nostrils into my brain. The
feel of his fingers pressing against my shoulders and his words
incited my anger.

He was sent to
give me drugs. Someone sent him. To kill me.

My molars clamped
down tight. Behind Orlando, the crowd to which he’d been
dispensing drugs grew restless as they milled around his vacated
stool. One of them spied him and stumbled our way.

“
Who
sent you?”

Insistent words
spilled through clenched teeth and between tight lips. I thought I’d
spoken loud enough, but he responded as though he didn’t hear
me.

“
You
have to take me back, Icarus. Take me away from this place.”

“
No.”

“
I
was always good to you. I always gave you what you wanted, sometimes
when you couldn’t pay for it.”

More of the lost
souls gathered behind him, closing in but not close enough that he
noticed them.

“
You
deserve to be here.”

“
No.
I did what I had to.” He grabbed the front of my shirt,
resorting to begging. “Please, please. Please take me back.”

“
No.”

“
Icarus.
I was your friend.”

“
My
friend?” I swiped his hands off my chest. “My friend?
You ruined my life.”

“
No.
I gave you what you asked for. You came to me.”

Anger exploded,
coursing out of my chest, down my arms. My flat palms hit him in the
chest, pushing him away. The impact surprised him and he stumbled
backward into the waiting arms of two dozen drug-hungry souls; they
engulfed him like an avalanche taking a skier.

Grabbing hands
pulled him down, snatched the bag of drugs and ripped it open
spilling syringes to the ground causing a frenzy amongst the damned.

My anger dissipated
as I watched lost soul after lost soul scoop syringes off the ground
and insert the dirty needles into their arms. Immediately after each
one did, they stepped forward and took a bite out of Orlando Albert,
consuming him like the slice of lime after their shot of tequila.

I should have been
disgusted, felt guilty for causing this, but I didn’t.

I should have
looked away; I didn’t.

Instead, I watched:
interested, titillated, vindicated. I watched each bite, each piece
of his soul gulped down the throat of one of those lost souls until
roughly half of Orlando Albert remained.

“
Icarus,
please,” he called from beneath the pile of desperate damned.