All Who Wander Are Lost (An Icarus Fell Novel) (53 page)

“
Not
him, take me.”

Marty’s
voice. He occupied a cage by himself rather than sharing with Todd
like before. It seemed odd they weren’t together, they’d
become a package deal in my mind: Marty and Todd, Todd and Marty.
Where you found Marty, you found Todd.

“
You
wanted to kill me,” I said amending my path to take me to
Marty.

“
I
was doing what I had to.”

He glared at me,
hands gripping the bars, drool running down his chin, the skin on
his face reddened like he’d spent way too long at the beach.
The man before me resembled the Marty I’d spent nights
drinking away my life with, but in a distant-cousin kind of way.
Like someone peeled his face off for a souvenir and left behind
vague remnants. I cringed at the thought and started to walk away.

“
Ric,
come on. You don’t know what it’s like down here.”

“
Don’t
listen to him, Ric. I’m the one who was always there for you.”

Todd populated the
cage beside Marty’s. It appeared he’d escaped the
effects of Trevor’s bucket of water, which explained why I’d
lost track of him at Hell-Sully’s—he’d been
hiding.

“
What
the Hell did you ever do for me? You were a puppet. Marty may as
well have taken a ventriloquist course to keep me from seeing his
lips move every time you spoke.”

My comment made
Marty spew an abbreviated guffaw, but Todd looked as though I’d
spit on the love letter he handed me.

“
I
didn’t try to kill you.”

“
You
didn’t stop them, either.”

His mouth opened
and closed a couple of times like a suffocating fish. I moved on to
the next cage while he found his voice and found Tony McSweeney
slumped in the corner. He scrambled to his feet. I flipped him the
bird and moved on.

Orlando Albert
looked like a man clinging to life. The holes in his flesh had begun
to rot around the edges; brownish blood and green-tinged pus oozed
from his open wounds. The smell emanating from him made me crinkle
my nose in disgust, reminding me of the head butt the priest so
kindly gave me without asking for recompense. Considerate.

I touched my poor
nose and flinched at the pain as I moved past the half-eaten drug
dealer without pausing to make rude gestures at him. He was a bad
man, but he already looked to have gotten what he deserved. Why
waste a good bird flip?

The next cage must
have been designed for a small animal, because it wasn’t big
enough for an adult to stand in. My mother sat cross-legged in the
center, the black and white nun’s garb she’d been
wearing when I last saw her replaced by a gray, shapeless dress
streaked with dirt. Her chin rested on her chest, her long hair was
fallen forward hiding her face. I stopped in front of her and
gripped the bars with both hands. The cage was small enough I could
have reached in and touched her. I didn’t.

“
Mother.”
She didn’t look up. There was blood on her hands. “Please.”

She raised her
head. As her hair fell away from her face, a few strands stuck to
the tears streaking her cheeks. She peered into my eyes for a moment
before speaking.

“
Your
face,” she said reaching between the bars.

At first I pulled
away. My nose hurt incredibly—much thanks to the drug dealer
for reminding me—and didn’t want her to touch it and
remind me further. But, for some reason, I couldn’t keep
myself from her touch.

It might be the
last time.

I leaned in and
allowed her fingers to brush the bump that wasn’t there before
Father Dominic’s introduced his forehead to the bridge of my
nose. Pain shot through my face, but I didn’t pull away. She
moved her fingers to my forehead and laid her palm over my nose. My
face throbbed. Beneath the pain, unnoticeable at first, a warmth
kindled and spread, filling my nostrils, my sinuses. It overtook the
pain until my mother’s hand resting over my face felt like a
gently applied hot water bottle.

When she took her
hand away, I brought my own fingers to my nose, tested it. Both pain
and bump were gone. I smiled at her and she did her best to return
it but looked like she dealt with her own pain, though I expected it
wasn’t physical.

I felt it, too.

“
Come
with me.”

She shook her head
like she did before. “I belong here.”

“
She
wants to stay,” Azrael’s all-male-choir voice
sing-songed behind me.

I pivoted toward
the sound of his voice and was surprised to find he stood only a few
paces behind me.

“
You
did this to her,” I said feeling a familiar anger building in
my gut. “She’s here because of you.”

Azrael didn’t
answer. His eyes glowed, his hair moved as if blown by some unfelt
breeze, but his expression remained neutral, unreadable. I felt my
mother’s hand on my shoulder.

“
Don’t
blame him. Why I’m here is of no significance. I’m here
and I shall stay.”

I looked back to
her, at the sadness in her eyes. This wasn’t an easy decision
for either of us, but it was out of my hands.

“
Will
I ever see you again?”

“
Who
knows what the future holds.”

She drew her hand
back through the bars, settled back into the tried and true
‘criss-cross applesauce’. It made me smile a little.

“
Take
care of yourself, M--.” I realized I didn’t know what to
call her. All the forms of ‘mother’ felt unfamiliar and
uncomfortable on my lips.

“
Azrael
takes care of me.”

I nodded and
reluctantly moved on to the next cage.

Poe had climbed off
Piper, allowing her to regain her feet. They stood on opposite sides
of the enclosure, eyeing each other warily. A trickle of blood ran
down Piper’s chin from her swollen lower lip.

“
Icarus,”
she said, the word distorted by the swelling.

I didn’t
respond, instead looking at Poe before turning my attention to
Piper. Memories swirled through my head, confusing me, throwing a
haze over my ability to make a decision. Only two possibilities
remained: my guardian angel whose loyalty was in question and a
woman who’d come out of nowhere with uncertain motives.

How can I
decide?

Bruce
Blake-All Who Wander Are Lost

I stared at the two
of them, blank faced. Behind me, I felt Azrael’s presence as
he looked on, waiting for me to choose who would go back with me and
who would remain in Hell, and I wondered if he preferred one choice
over the other. Did one soul hold more value to him? Should that be
part of my decision?

“
She
killed your mother,” Piper said pointing across the cage at
Poe.

“
She’s
a Carrion,” Poe responded.

I stared at Piper
for a few seconds then moved my head without taking my eyes off her
so Azrael would know I spoke to him.

“
Is
that true?”

I heard a movement,
a brush of fabric, and the cage in front of me disappeared. I stood
at the corner of a busy street, traffic rushing past me. I’d
been here before, when Mike showed me what happened when I wasn’t
available to do my job. Directly across the street, the woman
gripped her son’s hand while the boy held a red toy car
concealed in the other. I wanted to look away but couldn’t.

I’ve seen
this before. Why send me here?

Curiosity kept my
eyes on the woman and child.

The boy moved his
hand to look at his prize and it slipped from his grip and fell into
the street. He released his mother’s hand, leaned forward, and
I saw something I didn’t see before—he could have
reached the toy safely. A black-clad figure I hadn’t noticed
standing behind them pressed a finger to his back, over-balancing
him.

I knew what
happened next but found myself rushing across the busy road anyway,
avoiding cars as the mother threw her son to safety and took the
impact meant for him. She hit the post, spun a circle, the collision
jarring her soul free of her body. Within seconds, the Carrion
appeared at her side, gripped her arm to lead her away, but his time
I was close enough to see the Carrion’s face.

This time I saw
Piper.

I reached out to
wrest the woman’s soul from her, my fingers brushing the back
of the soul’s arm, then I was back in the clearing surrounded
by cages, my arm stuck between the bars, reaching for Piper. She
stared at me, a look of confusion on her face.

“
It’s
not true,” she said. “Whatever you saw, it’s not
true.”

I glared at her,
not knowing what to say or believe. Even with the fat lip, her
beauty touched me, triggered pleasant memories of the cave, her
body, her flesh pressed against mine. I remembered the straw stuck
in her hair when our lovemaking concluded.

And I remembered
the choice wasn’t completely mine.

I’d been a
willing participant who didn’t really have a choice. I
remembered how Piper appeared out of nowhere, both that time and
others, like someone who knew their way around Hell. I thought of
how often she’d come with news of Trevor yet did nothing to
stop it.

“
It’s
true.”

“
No!”

She rushed me,
taking me by surprise. I stumbled back but she would have gotten her
hands on me if Poe didn’t intercept her. They toppled to the
floor and rolled, bodies slamming against the bars of the cage.

And then Piper’s
head slammed against the floor.

The fingers of both
Poe’s hands intertwined with Piper’s hair as she
pistoned the woman’s head up and down. Piper grasped at Poe’s
wrists, writhed and fought beneath her, but the guardian angel’s
strength proved too much and her efforts diminished.

“
Stop
it!”

My words had no
effect and I wondered if she controlled her actions or if other
influences made her act this way. I turned to Azrael.

“
Stop
this,” I hissed.

“
I
am doing nothing.”