All Who Wander Are Lost (An Icarus Fell Novel) (55 page)

“
Icarus,”
she said, a tinge of pleading in her voice. I turned away.

Azrael stood
directly in front of me, Detective Williams at his side looking
disheveled as always, but now surprised as well.

How does he do
that?

“
Detective,”
I said and gave him a nod.

“
What’s
going on?”

“
I’m
getting you out of here.”

His expression
changed instantly to relief, but it didn’t stay long. It must
take more than death and a visit to Hell to squeeze the police-ness
out of a man, because a look of suspicion crossed his mug next.

“
Really?”

I looked at Azrael
and raised my eyebrows, passing the question along to the fallen
archangel. He nodded once then returned to the boy’s side.

“
Really,”
I said.

Azrael and the boy
watched us in silence and I swear a little sadness dulled the usual
glow in Azrael’s eye. But why? He said he wanted my freedom
and now I had it, and he got two Carrions to add to his stable in
return. Nothing to be sad about, right?

It’s your
imagination. Take the detective and get the fuck out of here before
someone changes their mind.

The boy, on the
other hand, waited with excited impatience, like he’d woken
early on Christmas morning and had to wait to open his gifts, though
I’d guess Christmas was one of the less popular holidays in
Hell.

“
Come
on.”

I strode away,
careful not to look into the cage at Poe and Piper as I did.
Detective Williams fell into step beside me.

“
Icarus.”

Poe’s voice.
I ignored her, my choice made. What’s the old saying? You’ve
pissed in your own bed, now you have to sleep in it, or some such
thing? Still, it wasn’t easy walking away. She’d been
the most constant person in my life since I died.

“
Icarus.
Please.”

The desperation in
Poe’s voice sank into my chest, compressed my heart until it
became difficult to breathe, but I neither stopped nor slowed.

She’s the
reason why all those people got sent to Hell. She set me up.

“
Icarus.”

She nearly got
my son condemned to Hell for eternity.

“
Ric.”

Detective Williams
caught me by the sleeve, stopping me, and pointed back toward Poe,
her desperation apparently affecting him. I gestured with my head,
indicating we had to go. He must have seen my anger at my one-time
guardian angel, my determination not to look back. I felt the
detective’s eyes on me but he said nothing.

“
If
I take her, you stay.”

The first time I
met the detective, I felt he was a good man despite the fact he’d
wanted to see me in jail. To take Poe back, I’d have to give
the devil his due, and there was only one other soul left. He’d
seen enough of Hell to stay prudently silent.

“
Ric,
please.”

She was crying. It
almost made me look back and reconsider my options. Trevor was
safe—I had to trust he was—and the others were gone. I
was leaving Hell with a man who’d hunted me for months,
determined to make me pay for crimes I didn’t commit.

Didn’t I?

I didn’t
wield the knife that killed Marty, Todd and the others, but I may as
well have. If I’d done what I was told, none of this would
have happened. If Poe did her job and kept me to my task, they’d
be alive and I wouldn’t have come to Hell to save a bunch of
people who, for the most part, either didn’t want to be saved
or didn’t deserve to be.

Which of us
deserved blame?

Both. If she’d
done her job, if I’d done mine. I could play the game in my
head for eternity, but I didn’t think Azrael and the boy would
let me.

I gave in and
glanced back. Poe stood against the cage, hands gripping the bars.
Piper lay on the ground behind her, unconscious or maybe dead for
good; Azrael stood beside the boy to her right. The expression on my
one-time guardian angel’s face did its best to convince me not
to leave her. And it came close. Pain and desperation, a look like
her best friend died while running over her dog.

She didn’t
say anything. She didn’t use her angelic abilities to sway my
decision, didn’t beg or plead or illuminate with the golden
glow capable of making people do anything she wanted. She just
looked at me with eyes reflecting hurt beyond description. For a
split second, I saw her shy, endearing smile; I remembered her love
of all things sweet and the way she was always nervous, unable to
look me in the eye.

No problem doing
that now. She’d changed, the charade gone. But even after all
the wrongs I’d uncovered and all the blame I found to lay on
her, I knew I’d miss sitting in the Denny’s watching her
struggle a thick chocolate shake through a straw.

It would pass.

“
You
deserve to stay,” I said and led the detective away.

He dragged his feet
to slow me but I kept him moving. I heard Poe sob once.

“
Icarus,”
she called, the sadness and tears gone from her voice. Instead,
resignation and disappointment weighed her words down. “Everything
I did, I did for you.”

I pulled Detective
Williams along by the sleeve of his rumpled suit jacket, his
resistance fading, and did my best not to listen to Poe’s
words following us like desperate puppies.

“
Things
aren’t always what they seem.”

We increased our
pace, not knowing where to go but feeling the necessity of getting
away: from Poe, from the angel-of-death and from the boy—especially
the boy. We kept walking, Poe kept talking, her words fading with
distance. She said something about Michael that I ignored like
everything else, something about my mother that piqued my interest.
We walked on, the detective silent at my side.

After a while, the
ground shivered beneath my feet. I stopped.

“
Did
you feel that?”

“
What?”

Nothing for a few
seconds. I thought it either my imagination or a volcano erupting in
Chile. An instant before we began moving, it happened again, more
noticeable this time.

“
Felt
that.”

We set out and the
ground shook a third time, a fourth. We increased our pace to a
speed walk.

“
Icarus
Fell.”

The words boomed
around us, echoing in spite of the lack of anything for them to echo
off.

“
Ric,”
I corrected.

Something made me
stop, literally. I didn’t want to, but I had no choice.
Detective Williams skidded to a halt beside me. With no desire to do
so but with the same feeling of having no control, I spun around to
look back.

No more cage
holding Poe and Piper. Azrael and the boy stood twenty yards behind
us, as if they’d been sneaking along, following us. Behind
them, the elephant-beast I’d seen after the conclusion of my
fall stomped its feet periodically, waved its trunk.

No elephant-thing
cage, either.

“
You
didn’t think it would be easy leaving Hell, did you?”
the boy asked.

I saw the twinkle
in his eyes, the shift of expression from the boy waiting to open
the gifts to the satisfied look after decorative paper is torn to
shreds. Bitter saliva filled my mouth and I gulped it around a lump
forming in my throat. I searched desperately for a flippant remark,
a vaguely funny quip to relieve the sudden feeling of dread
permeating my muscles. I came up short.

Small gestures can
say much: Azrael’s eyes darted toward the boy and he shook his
head. The boy ignored him and dipped his chin to his chest, nodding
in our direction.

“
Run,
Icarus,” Azrael yelled, his eyes on the boy. “Run.”

I hesitated a
second, stunned, then the beast charged, orangutan-like hands at the
ends of its six stumpy legs beating a rhythm on the ground that
shuddered up my legs and into my soul.

Detective Williams
grabbed me by the arm and dragged me toward the forest.

Bruce
Blake-All Who Wander Are Lost

We hunkered down
behind the biggest, strangest fern I’d ever seen. Each of its
leaves splayed out at least six feet long and three feet wide, their
surface such a dark green it might have been black, spattered with
spots of red like drops of blood. I didn’t touch them to find
out.

It felt like we’d
been pursued by the elephant-thing for hours but time and perception
in Hell are skewed. And not in our favor. We crouched silently
behind the fern, finding ways to deal with its putrid,
wet-towel-left-in-the-washing-machine-too-long smell as the beast
crashed through underbrush and knocked over trees looking for us.

At least we knew
where to find it.

“
We
can’t stay here. It’ll scent us eventually,” I
said.

Detective Williams
turned his head toward me, eyes wide and bottom lip quivering. This
wasn’t the way I expected a seasoned cop to react to a
challenging situation.

“
Where
do we go? What do we do? You said you’d get me out of here.
Take me home. Take me anywhere. Just get me out of here.”

“
Sshh.”

I put my hand on
his shoulder to calm him but he stood and backed away a couple of
steps.

“
I
can’t do this. We have to get out of here.”

The sound of the
beast rooting through the forest stopped and I imagined its head
cocked to one side, listening. Did it hear him? Nothing happened for
a minute. I remained crouched behind the fern, struggling not to gag
on the odor penetrating my throat. Williams stood shivering, knees
practically knocking together.

“
I
can’t stay here,” he said, his voice high-pitched. “You
have no idea what they did to me.”

The creature moved
again, this time with no doubt about the purpose to its steps. The
ground quivered under me and the detective’s cheeks lost their
color as he stared past me between the fern’s enormous leaves.
He’d seen it.