Secrets of the Hanged Man (Icarus Fell #3) (An Icarus Fell Novel) (27 page)

Dido swung again, landing an overhand right with a crunch of scales. I gritted my teeth, prepared to be dragged over the edge, wondering if this meant my end, or if an afterlife in Hell awaited me. Neither sounded attractive.

I slipped forward, wishing for one more chance to tell my son how much I loved him.

The pain in my body was so great, I’d hardly noticed the breaking of a rib or the tail-noose tight enough on my wrist to make my hand swell to the size of one of Mickey Mouse’s, but I didn’t miss the hands grasping my ankles.

My progress halted with me bent at the waist, my crotch pressed against the lip of the fissure and overbalanced enough I should have gone over the edge. The air wafting up out of the pit clung to the inside of my nostrils and throat like a living thing attempting to suffocate me. A cough did nothing to clear it, only shook me and made me slip an inch farther, but the hands kept me from falling.

Trevor.

Panic jumped into my chest. If Dido and the beast jerked too much, he might be pulled over with me, and anger at Rae for letting him go bubbled inside me.

“
Trevor. No.”

Each word was a knife poking and prodding in my chest, finding the tender spots. My grip on the creature’s tail slipped, tightening its strangle hold on my wrist. I looked at Dee, at her punch looping in at the creature again; black fire flickered from her fist and when it hit Scarecrow, flames danced across its face and it howled in pain.

The tug of war between the beast’s weight and the hands grasping my ankles raged. They’d pull me back half an inch, then I’d slip forward again. The hands were losing the battle. He had to let go before it was too late.

“
Trev.”

“
Dad!”

His voice sounded too close to have come from near my ankles. I wrenched my head around and saw him kneeling at the edge beside me, which meant someone other than my son prevented me from going over the edge.

Trevor stared past me at his one-time friend, eyes wide, and my heart lurched for him. When did my son last have a friend? Had he ever? I sympathized. I’d grown up without any of my own. But to have one and find out he’s a demon must be too much to bear.

“
Dad. What can I do?”

I slipped and he grabbed the waistband of my pants. My gaze wandered from him, to Dee swinging at the beast, to the appendage encircling my wrist, then to my son.

“Shears.”

His expression suggested he thought I might be a little bit crazy. How else do you look at a man hanging over the edge of a pit leading to Hell with a demon’s tail wrapped around his wrist? Couldn’t blame him, but my window of opportunity to continue living was closing.

“Shears,” I croaked again.

This time he got what I meant and released his grip on my belt loops. The hands on my ankles held me fast as Dee struck the beast again and the clawed hand grasping her went slack. She jumped on the opportunity and clamored backward up him like an athletic monkey in some fucked up National Geographic nature documentary. Her legs wrapped around his knees, her head at the level of his stomach when he regained his senses.

Both the beast’s hands were free and he raked Dido’s head and face with his claws. She blocked and dodged, their bodies swinging violently. I slipped forward and heard voices cry out—Rae’s voice, Ashton’s voice. I grunted and strained.

Who built the garden shed so far away?

I closed my eyes, exerting every aching, pain-filled muscle in my body to keep from slipping as the fight between spirit and demon raged. A second later, I sensed Trevor kneeling at my side and opened my eyes.

Never in my life have a pair of long-handled pruning shears made me so happy.

I nodded toward Scarecrow’s tail. “Can you reach?”

“
I think so.”

Trevor lay on his belly beside me, head and shoulders stuck out over the side, and stretched out his arms. The blades of the shears hovered a few inches away from the bit of tail looped around my wrist. Close, but not close enough. He wriggled farther over the edge and my stomach lurched with the worry he might overbalance and fall.

Still too far.

“
Pull,” Trevor said propping himself up on an elbow. “I can’t reach.’

The hands on my ankles did as he asked, yanking me back. I didn’t move much, but I hoped it was enough. Trevor leaned again, hanging precariously over a quick trip to Hell. The cool metal shears brushed the skin of my wrist half an inch away from their target.

“More,” he shouted over his shoulder.

Crippling pain raged in my shoulders, every breath tormented me, but as Rae and Ashton pulled, I yanked up with every last bit of strength left in my body.

The tail slid between the open jaws of the shears.

“
Dido.” I meant it to be a shout, but my parched throat emitted a pathetic croak. “Get ready.”

The two of them kept swinging and clawing. She didn’t answer, shimmying an inch closer. With another painful exhalation, I turned my head to Trevor and nodded. He opened the shears wider, ready for a tough cut, and closed them.

On empty air.

At the last instant, the Cory-beast jerked and swung out of danger. If Trevor hadn’t been lying beside me, I’d probably have burst into tears. What little energy remained in me drained away, the beast dangling from my wrist solely by the grip of its tail. Through the pain, I felt the skin on my hand slipping, like a burlesque performer removing a glove. Fuzzy spots swam at the edge of my vision, threatening my consciousness.

With no other choice, I screamed in pain and to force the gray from my eyes. Rae and Ashton must have taken it as a signal, because they pulled harder, moving me a full inch. Through the haze caused by the torture of having my hand wrenched from my arm, I watched the shears find their way to the thing’s tail again.

“
No, Trevor. Don’t.” The thing spoke with Cory’s voice and Trev hesitated. His eyes flickered toward the beast’s face and I followed his gaze; the scales had peeled back leaving the face of a teenage boy peering up at us, pleading. “Please.”

“
Trevor,” I breathed.

“
I got this, Dad.” His voice held steel I’d never heard in it before. He squeezed the handles together and the thing screamed in both Cory’s voice and its own.

“
Now, Dee,” I gasped.

Trevor grunted with the effort of cutting the tough tail; black blood spurted from the wound. Dido smashed her fist into the thing’s face, ebony flames jumping from her hand, lighting its cheek, then she swung backward, arching her back and throwing her hands toward me.

The jaws of the shears came together, severing the creature’s tail, and the weight that seemed to have hung from my wrist forever disappeared. A fraction of a second later, Dee’s fingers grasped the same wrist, digging into the wound left behind, and my beleaguered consciousness gave up and fled.

***

I opened my eyes to find my body blissfully and inexplicably free of pain. The hardness of the ground pressed against my back, the wetness of melted slush soaked my pants. The sky overhead swirled with gray clouds, but the falling snow had stopped sometime during my struggle on the edge of Hell.

“
He’s awake.”

I knew without looking that the voice belonged to Rae, but I moved my eyes anyway, and the pain returned with a vengeance. It started at my wrist and penetrated its way through me, climbing up my arm, through my shoulder, across my chest, joining other pains in a connect the dots of agony. Involuntarily, my face screwed up into a caricature of myself. When the first wave of it settled, I fought my eyes open and found Rae and Trevor leaning over me. He appeared concerned, she looked confused.

I did my best to smile at them, but I’m sure it came out a grimace.

“
Are you all right, Dad?”

“
Never better.”

I tried to force myself up to my elbows but slipped, or made it appear I slipped rather than admitting I didn’t have the strength. Trevor grabbed me under the armpit and helped me. A strip of blood-soaked cloth wrapped my wrist where the thing had held me, and every breath became a fresh adventure in torture; otherwise I felt pretty good.

Liar.

“
What was that?” Rae asked.

A valid question, but how do you explain a demon sent to kill the man responsible for helping souls to Heaven to a woman who doesn’t even go to church? No fucking idea, so I shrugged. I didn’t suppose for a second a shrug would be enough answer, but other pressing questions distracted her.

“Why didn’t you let go?”

“
I couldn’t let it take Dee.” My eyes flickered across the yard and found her absent. “Where is she? Did we save her?”

“
Who?” Rae asked.

Trevor put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a shallow nod that provided me a great deal of relief. I smiled, turned to Rae, and held my hand up to show her the bandage she might have wrapped my wrist with herself.

“He had a good hold on me.”

Silence fell for a minute and Ashton came to stand beside Rae, the red marks on his throat where my fingers choked him still noticeable. I felt a little bad but, when he slipped his arm around my ex-wife’s waist, the pang of jealousy and hatred I normally experienced was less. A bit, but not as much.

They both stared at me and I wondered which they found most difficult to believe: what they’d seen happen or that I was Rae’s ex-husband, returned to spread joy nine months after my death. Her next question settled the debate.

“
Are you really Ric?”

It did my heart good to converse with someone who called me by the name I preferred. I pushed myself up to sit with some effort, then allowed Trevor to help me to my feet.

“You should go to the hospital,” Ashton said before I responded to Rae.

“
Naw, I’ll be fine. Doesn’t hurt as much as it looks.” I offered a wan smile. “Thanks for the help.”

“
Sure.”

“
Sorry about the...” I gestured toward his neck, indicating the welts my fingers left. He nodded and I returned my gaze to Rae. We regarded each other for about thirty seconds and I think she got her answer.

I don’t know how it was for her, but in that short glance, years of life flowed between us, both the lives we lived and the lives we might have had. How different things might have been; how different it could be now. I literally wasn’t the man I’d been, and it set me wondering what it could mean for us. Trevor stood beside me, his hand on my back to steady me, and tears glistened in Rae’s eyes. Beside her, Ashton stared at his feet, and I understood this family no longer belonged to me, if it ever had.

“You won’t have to worry about me,” I said limping toward the street. “Trevor and I will hang out sometimes, but I won’t bug you otherwise.”

Trevor grabbed my arm to help me across the yard, the fissure leading to Hell having healed itself sometime while I was unconscious. When we got to the sidewalk I stopped and peered over my shoulder at my ex-wife—the woman I’d loved and lost—snuggled into the arms of another man.

I raised my hand and took my leave.

***

It turned out Trevor could see Dido, though Rae and Ashton couldn’t—some kind of side effect of the time my son spent in Hell, like Dee suggested.

We’d been successful in pulling her from the beast’s clutches and clear of the crevasse before it closed up, and she’d told Trevor where she’d be, so I sent him back to his mother and went straight there before she got into any more trouble. I’d worked too hard pulling her from the jaws of death to let anything happen to her now.

The Trounces’ front door was unlocked, so I pushed it open and took a step across the threshold. With the sky dimming toward night, the inside of the house lay in darkness.

“
Hello?”

“
In here.”

The voice coming from the living room belonged to Dee and only Dee. I crept along the hall and peeked around the corner, half-expecting to find her fists engulfed in ebony fire, or her face rolling through other faces like the spinner on a slot machine, but neither was the case. A candle flickering on the mantle threw odd shadows on the same eight-year-old girl sitting on the couch I’d met here not so long ago.

“Are you all right?” I asked stepping into the room.

“
I’m good. You look like shit.”

“
Language.”

She laughed and stood, crossed the room to put her arms around me. She hugged me tight, her grip sending pain shooting along my spine and through my chest, but I didn’t tell her or make her stop.

“You miss them. That’s why you came here.”

She hesitated before answering. “I guess. What do we do now?”

My body practically sighed with relief when she released me. She posed a good question: how do you follow up ridding the world of a demon? I’d been pondering the same thing on my way to find her and the one answer I found came courtesy of the archangel Michael, much to my chagrin.

“
Chan Wu.”

“
I don’t want to go. He’ll send me back, ” Dee said. I opened my mouth to ask what she meant by ‘back’, but she cut me off. “Can’t I stay with you?”