All Who Wander Are Lost (An Icarus Fell Novel) (40 page)

No. Please not
this.

Her lips moved to
speak the words but they sounded only inside her head. Crickets
hidden in scraggy bushes growing a few feet from the edge of the
tracks chirruped, speaking to each other in their monotone rasps.
Their night songs disguised the sound of a man snoring, a homeless
man she knew she’d find sleeping on the tracks half-a-dozen
yards from where she stood.

Soon, she’d
hear the train.

When this really
happened—in the real world instead of in the re-lived world of
Hell—it was the second time they’d sent her out. The
first time, she’d come back empty-handed and been returned to
the shack to be raped over and over, to kill those boys and herself
again and again until convinced to perform the work.

The rail shivered
under Poe’s foot and she wondered what would happen if she
remained on the tracks, didn’t move before the train came,
bearing down on her with the cold light of its cyclopean eye. She
thought it, but her feet paid her no mind as she joined the crickets
in the rough shrubs.

A minute later, the
light appeared down the track; with it came the dull rumble of the
train. The first time—the real time—she considered
simply running over to the man and shaking him awake, but the shock
of living her death over and over kept her from it. This time, she
knew not to waste thought on it, it would make no difference to the
outcome.

The train
approached, sounded its horn at a crossing, the blast startling Poe
like it had so many years before. The ground shook with its approach
as the light shone down the track, illuminating the man lying
half-on the tracks. The train’s horn blasted again as it sped
by the nearest road.

Get up! Get up!

The futility of her
lips moving along with the words in her head brought a lump to Poe’s
throat. Things were about to end for the man, but it would get worse
for her.

The distance
between train and man shrank. Poe looked from one to the other. A
few seconds, no more. The man stirred, a movement Poe didn’t
notice when this happened for real. He propped himself on an elbow,
looked up at the train rushing toward him.

Poe’s heart
leaped into her throat as she clearly saw the man’s face:
dazed-looking with sleep at first, then slack with fear, his jaw
dropping open comically. His feet pushed against the ground,
searching for purchase to move out of the train’s path, but
they found none as the dry dirt gave way under his churning shoes.

That didn’t
happen. He didn’t know.

The train hit him
and flung him off the tracks, spinning him three hundred-sixty
degrees on the vertical plane like a huge, awkward Frisbee. He
landed in the brush ten feet from Poe as the locomotive and its
cargo rushed past without noticing the life it ended.

Poe allowed her
feet to carry her to the man. The impact had split his head open,
dislodged its contents. She began to cry, like her first time here.
Then the man sat up.

Not the man,
precisely, but his soul. Poe knew it to be the case this time, but
it shocked her the first time as she’d thought the man had
survived. He looked younger, cleaner, and shimmered a little in the
dark of the night.

“
What...?”
The man looked around him until his eyes settled on Poe.

“
It’s
okay,” she said, words choked with enough emotion he couldn’t
have believed them.

The man’s
expression was the same as when he saw the train: wide-eyed, gaping
mouth. He scrambled away and his soul stretched like an elastic band
caught on a twig. It detached and he jumped to his feet, stared down
at the broken body he’d inhabited for decades, its limbs now
twisted into unfathomable shapes, its head split open like a coconut
with all the milk spilled out.

“
What
did you do to me?”

“
No,
I--”

The man took off,
stumbling through the tangled shrubs, heading for the easier going
of the railroad tracks. His foot slipped in his own blood, but he
kept his feet, made it to the tracks, and ran.

Poe sighed. As bad
as it was watching him die again, this part would be worse.

She darted out of
the brush and onto the tracks behind him, boots clopping on the
wooden ties as a black overcoat flapped against her thighs. The man
stole a look back over his shoulder at her closing ground, and the
sight of her gave him speed, but she was too quick. A moment later,
she grabbed him by the shoulders and rode him to the ground.

They scraped along
the tracks, the man groaning with the impact, but he twisted himself
under her to end up on his back. He punched her in the throat,
pushed her away, raked her cheeks with his nails.

Reliving the event,
Poe fought the rage building inside her. It wasn’t anger at
the man or his attempts to be free of her, she’d have done the
same thing if she suspected what awaited. This anger was at Aaron
Baxter and his cousin, at what they’d done to her and what
they made her do, at the time she’d spent in Hell. She raged
at going through it all again, of repeating this, and at having lost
Icarus’ trust and his son.

I’m
sorry. I’m so sorry,
her
lips said wordlessly as her fists flailed, hammering the surprised
soul’s face, pummeling him into unconsciousness, then she hit
him some more.

Sometime later, Poe
found herself kneeling in the corner of a room. She hadn’t
noticed the train tracks and the man’s battered soul disappear
from around her. Shoulders sagging, hands lying loosely in her lap,
she stared at her fingers, at the chipped nails and the black
buttons on her overcoat. She didn’t look up, didn’t want
to. She couldn’t imagine being anywhere that would make her
feel better.

She gazed into her
lap until she heard the grunt made by a woman’s throat. It
held no threat or anger but sounded more like the struggle of a
pained beast.

Poe raised her head
and saw a woman lying on a bed, propped on her elbows, her swollen
belly preventing her from sitting up further. Another woman crouched
at the end of the bed, the sleeves of her blouse rolled up, a towel
draped over her shoulder.

Poe stood, pulled
the hood dangling at her back up over her head, held her breath and
watched.

†‡†

I plucked straw out
of the hair at the back of my head and let it fall to the ground as
we made our way to the next cave opening. The fourth. We’d
exited the first cave onto the empty ledge and I felt something was
missing, but my foggy brain refused to nail it down. I dazedly
surveyed the area like a man retracing his steps trying to figure
out where he’d left his keys but soon gave up in favor of
searching the caves.

After finding our
torrid lovemaking in the first, the second and third caves had
proven disappointingly empty. If endorphins hadn’t been racing
through my body like a pack of greyhounds after a mechanical rabbit,
I’d have been getting stressed by our lack of success.

“
I
don’t think we’re going to find anything here,”
Piper said.

The first words
either of us had spoken since emerging from each other’s
bodies. It left me feeling a little disappointed the reverence had
been broken. The spell was broken, the pleasure done. Back to
business.

“
Where
to, then?”

She shrugged, of
course, and I remembered why we were there.

“
I
have to find Trevor. Do you know where he is?”

“
No.
I haven’t been able to locate him since your guardian angel
lost him.”

She practically
spat the words ‘guardian angel’. Right then, I didn’t
care what she thought of Poe. I’d have to deal with her later.

“
What
does that mean?”

“
I
don’t know.”

I thought about
asking her what good she was, but my anger would have been
misplaced. Piper didn’t get my son into this mess; that
distinction fell squarely on Poe’s shoulders. Piper wanted to
help. She deserved my gratitude, not my ire. Given the
circumstances, controlling my emotions was proving difficult.

“
Damn
it.” I looked up the next set of stairs. “You have no
ideas?”

“
Sorry.”

“
Then
let’s try up there.”

My mind full with
the smolderings of anger and the residue of desire, I took the
stairs two at a time—for the first few at least, until I ran
out of steam. I heard Piper’s footsteps padding up the steps
behind me, her breathing easy, not labored the way the climb made
mine. At the next landing, I paused, bent at the waist to catch my
breath. She stood beside me, watching with a sly smile.

“
It’s
the altitude,” I gasped. “The air’s thinner.”

“
Down
here in Hell.”

I straightened and
shrugged giving her a taste of her own medicine, then directed my
attention toward the caves.

“
Any
idea which one?” I asked.

She shrugged and
strolled past me appraising the nearest caves. After a few paces,
she pivoted on her heel to face me, hair swinging around her head in
a dark cloud, eyes sparkling. Any misplaced anger I’d been
tempted to direct her way disappeared at the sight of her beauty,
and I struggled to put the memories of the cave out of my head and
focus on the task at hand.

“
We’ve
got to look somewhere,” I said.

“
How
about this one?”

“
Yeah,
we should--”

I looked beyond her
shoulder and saw a figure standing at the foot of the stairs leading
to the next level of caves. Seeing another person cleared the
cobwebs from my head. Although too far away to see their face, I
sensed a familiarity. I stepped past Piper and squinted at the
figure, my shoulder brushing the angel’s, but I barely noticed
the accompanying tingle. A couple more steps, a little more
squinting.

A black frock
clothed the figure but with some white around his or her head and
upper chest. I recognized the costume: a nun.

“
Mother?”

I realized two
things at once: she wasn’t dressed that way last time I saw
her, and she’d been the unidentified missing thing when Piper
and I emerged from our rocky love nest. The angel’s touch and
affection somehow affected me by erasing my mother’s presence
from my mind until now.

I broke into a trot
leaving Piper behind and passing the yawning cave mouths. As I
jogged, I got no closer to her. Cave openings went by, my feet
pounded the red clay leaving dusty footprints in my wake, yet I made
no progress toward my goal. I glanced over my shoulder at Piper
watching me from the top of the stairs, her figure small with
distance. I was moving but not going anywhere.