On Unfaithful Wings (31 page)

A rose bush scratched a bloody track across my arm as I pounded through their garden, over the rear fence and into the neighbor’s yard, my punctured thigh throbbing with every step. For forty-five minutes, I found out what a rabbit must feel like chased by a fox. Through yards and gardens, across lane ways and traffic-clogged streets, I finally gained enough lead to duck unseen into a deserted building. Back pressed against the wall, chest heaving with exertion and nervous excitement, I peered through a gap in the boards nailed across the window. The knife wound hurt, and the scratches left by the thorns. Blood hammered at my temples, but under the pain, the panic hid an unexpected exhilaration as the sound of shoes slapping pavement grew closer. The feeling grew to a head until, after a minute, a shadow passed by the window: one of the cops. I waited for his partner’s silhouette to go by, too, but he didn’t come. They must have spilt up. The exhilaration--a feeling like being a child on the verge of being caught during a rousing game of hide-and-seek--passed with the cop.

I lurched away from the window and headed into the heart of the decaying building. Decision time again: stay and hide or run for it. Given the outcome the last time the option for flight presented itself and I didn’t snatch it, common sense screamed to choose that alternative this time. When the cops didn’t catch up to me soon, they’d likely be back to search hiding places along my route, so cowering here didn’t seem the best option.

Congratulations, common sense. You win for a change.

I went through a splintered door hanging on one rusted hinge and into a dim corridor smelling of mould and urine. An uncomfortable familiarity struck me about the place; I wrote it off to the atmosphere possessed by all abandoned buildings--the closed-in quality of the air, the feel of death, the wondering what may lie through the next door.

I refused to recognize it as the same building that made a guest appearance in my Hell.

As I blundered down the hall lined with doorless doorways, I glanced into each room, searching for an exit onto a back alley. No luck. The corridor ended at the one door still left intact in the entire place. In fact, it looked new: the hinges gleamed, brassy and rust-free. Unsurprisingly, a cautious twist of the door knob proved the door locked.

Shit.

Locked doors in abandoned buildings mean one thing: trouble. And the people behind such locked doors are more dangerous than cops. I backed down the hall, hoping anyone behind the new-looking door didn’t notice my attempt to gain entry and come out guns-a-blazing. A few doors beyond where my foray began I found stairs to the second floor and loped up them as quickly and quietly as my bleeding leg would take me.

In the first room on the second floor, my experienced window-smashing elbow made short work of a blacked-out pane. I stepped out onto the tiny metal balcony of a fire escape. The rusted landing wobbled and creaked giving the impression that the decomposed bolts affixing it to the wall would let go, spilling me to the ground. They held. I crouched in place a minute, back pressed against the brick wall catching my breath and listening for footsteps. The knife wound in my thigh made the descent hard, but my shoes touched pavement without incident. I hobbled away down the alley, the distant wail of sirens hurrying my step.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Ashton mentioned seeing my picture on the news, so returning to my room seemed a foolhardy choice. By now, a bookie would have given even odds the inn’s proprietor had seen the news, recognized the man suspected of being the psycho-killer stalking the city, and called the police. No matter, I had to take the chance. The blood stiffening one leg of my trousers made me stand out like a jockey on a basketball team. Nothing in the room mattered but I needed to change my pants.

Half-an-hour spent staking out my own residence led me to believe it was safe to go in. I flipped up the collar of my coat and skulked to the door like a man with something to hide, appropriate given my status as a man with something to hide. The room looked like a drunk resided in it: exactly how I left it. I kicked aside an empty Gray Goose bottle and went to the dresser for a fresh pair of pants wondering what to do with the bloody ones. Things like bloody clothing leaned toward incrimination.

Clean pants tucked under my arm, I headed for the bathroom and peeled the blood-caked pair gingerly off my leg, sucking air through my teeth against the expected pain. Expected, but strangely absent in spite of the brown blood caking my leg, groin to ankle. I doused a face cloth with warm water, squeezed off the excess, and patted my leg, careful not to aggravate the wound. The dried layer of blood washed away stubbornly, smearing at first and requiring several rinsings of the cloth before revealing the spot where Ashton buried his knife in my thigh. I stared at the pink skin of my thigh peppered with black hairs.

“What the...?”

No wound. Not even a scar.

“How the hell?”

“Raphael.”

I spun, the once-white-now-pink face cloth dropping from my grasp as I raised my fists, ready for a fight. Gabe smiled making me instantly aware she’d caught me standing in the bathroom with my pants around my ankles.

“Gabe? What are you doing here?”

“Raphael,” she repeated. “Remember him? The Archangel responsible for healing? He left some of his power in you when he healed your gunshot wound.”

“Right.”

I yanked a towel off the rack, dried my leg and pulled on the fresh jeans. Standing in front of Gabe half-naked didn’t necessarily embarrass me, but the ideas it gave me required a pair of pants to hide the results. I didn’t need an angel to see she brought me to half-mast, not now.

“Why are you here?”

She reached behind her back and pulled a scroll out of the magical pocket. Without flourish, she held it out, her smile drilling dimples in her cheeks. Business as usual. Part of me feared what might be written on the scroll and wanted nothing to do with it, and that part managed to restrain the other urge to snatch the scroll away, tear it open and see whose name it held. I balanced the two and let her put it in my hand like slow motion relay runners passing the baton.

“You probably shouldn’t stay here.”

“No, I guess I fucked up my exceptional living arrangements, didn’t I.”

My sarcasm appeared lost on her. “It’s not your fault, Icarus. Forces are working against you.”

Comforting.

In my opinion, her words qualified for a spot in the top five understatements ever put to words, but I didn’t bother mentioning it to her. Instead, I regarded the scroll in my hand, rolled it back and forth on my open palm, hesitant to open it. A surety boiled in my gut, bubbling fear up into my chest and throat: it would be Trevor’s name penned in beautiful script on the yellowed paper. In any case, the scroll held the name of someone marked for death and my opening it or not didn’t determine who or when, nor cause its postponement. No point delaying. I unfurled it, revealing the swooping calligraphy indicative of an angel’s hand an inch at a time. The fine, curving lines read like music to the eyes--they didn’t say ‘Trevor Fell’.

I let out my breath.

“You don’t have much time.”

According to the time and date on the scroll, a couple of hours remained until the death of some guy named Dante Frank--a name I was relieved to find I didn’t recognize . Sounded like either a professional football player or a pimp.

“I can’t do it,” I said. Gabe’s smile finally faded. “I have to find Trevor. The priest is after him.”

Gabe grabbed my wrist and a thrill shot up my arm, through my shoulder and into my chest far more intense than the times Poe laid hands on me. The power in the Archangel must have been incredible.

“Icarus, you have to.”

“No, I’ve got to take care of my boy.” I dropped my gaze from her eyes. “If someone else goes to Hell so he’s safe, I’m okay with that.”

“I’m not.”

I pursed my lips and looked into her gingerbread eyes. It was the first time I’d seen a serious expression on her face.

“Can’t you get someone else to do it? Surely I’m not the only harvester you have.”

“There are others. They have their own assignments.”

She let go of my wrist, the electric feeling siphoning away along with her touch, leaving behind an emptiness, a feeling of something special being taken from me, something I might never have again. I fought back unexpected tears at the loss but hid them by rolling up the scroll and setting it in the bathroom sink.

“Forget Hell.” Her tone made it impossible to do anything but look at her. Sparks flickered in her eyes the way tears must have glimmered in mine. “What happened last time you let the Carrions take a soul?”

I thought of Marty and Todd. Poe said they never made it to the drop point, but maybe they were still trapped here on earth, as ghosts or--more likely given their demeanor--poltergeists. Probably haunting a bar. The thought relieved some of my sense of loss. They’d be happy there.

“Who are Marty and Todd?”

“Not funny, Gabe. You’re the one who gave me the scrolls.”

She tilted her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“My drinking buddies, the last souls I didn’t collect when I was supposed to. You gave me the scrolls at the bar.”

“No, I did not.”

The time on the scroll was wrong.

I suppressed a shudder and remembered the lack of tattoo on the back of her neck. The implications of someone--something--else disguised as Gabe leading me astray, tricking me, felt devastating. I fought against the sense of betrayal. It wasn’t her.

“Then who--?”

“I’m speaking of Father Dominic. What has happened since you didn’t collect his soul?”

Right: that didn’t come out so well. If I’d taken his soul like intended, none of this would have happened, everyone would still be alive, Trevor would be safe. All the blame for the deaths, the danger stalking my son, lay with me.

“It’s not about blame, Icarus. It’s about what you must do now.”

“For Christ’s sake, will you stop doing that? Can’t a man have a little privacy?”

She had a point. If the priest had come back for revenge, could others do the same? How could I protect Trevor from an army of the dead? Ignoring the scroll--this one or any one--could put Trevor and others in more serious danger.

I had to go.

“Good,” she said and I glowered at her, but my sour look did nothing to deter her. “We received a tip that this harvest is related to your priest.”

“A tip?”

“We have people everywhere. Collect your things and move on. It won’t be safe here long.”

“So they tricked me.”

“It would seem so.”

I considered her with suspicious eyes. Fool me once, shame on you...

“How do I know you’re really Gabe?”

The dreamy smile remained on her face as her fingers caressed my cheek, seemingly without her having moved. The electrical sensation of pleasure rocketed through my head, coursed along my veins. My doubt disappeared.

“Good. You should go now.”

I did what she said grudgingly, the regret of deserting Trevor burning in my gut like an ulcer left running wild. Residue of Gabe’s touch ricocheted around my skull, making me feel simultaneously blessed and cursed as I jammed all my worldly possessions into a single back pack, slung it over my shoulder and walked out the door. I left the motel room key on the dresser but took the blood-stained wash cloth and jeans. The fewer things to tie me to this room and the crimes, the better. Sure, I’d left fingerprints everywhere--like Gabe’s touch left imprints on my soul--but the fingerprints of a dead man didn’t prove much.

***

It turned out I knew Dante Frank, but by a different name and gender. He’d been Danielle Francis when we knew each other, a downtown hooker who’d shared needles with me a few times. Everyone laughed when Danielle went on about being a man trapped in a woman’s body; it seemed the joke was on us.

She cleaned up a few years ago, stashed away the money for a few choice procedures --breast reduction, testosterone treatment; the opposite of what every other woman would have done--and worked as a high-priced escort offering services to a different kind of clientele. As a woman, her bad complexion and stringy hair had kept her from being very attractive, but not enough to keep her from earning the money needed for her transformation.

She made a better looking man.

The resemblance between Dante and Danielle was enough that, if you recognized one, you knew the other. One strange step away from identical twins.

I caught up to her--him--twenty minutes before his assigned time of demise on a street not far from the address on the scroll. He didn’t look like a working guy trolling for a John, more like someone wandering the city with no particular destination. Gabe had told me a soul’s fate couldn’t be changed once their name appeared on a scroll, but I as still willing to give it a try. Enough dead people nibbled at my conscience for me to sympathize with Bruce Willis in
The Sixth Sense;
I wanted to avoid adding to the total if I could. No one said meddling was against the rules. Hell, Poe, Gabe, and Mikey hadn’t really given me rules, so maybe preventing a death wasn’t verboten, especially under these circumstances. One way to find out.