All Who Wander Are Lost (An Icarus Fell Novel) (23 page)

She tried to raise
her head to look at Trevor, assure him she was okay, but the task
felt like raising a medicine ball at the end of a yard stick.

“
I...,”
she managed.

The world went
black.

†‡†

Trevor jumped
forward and caught the guardian angel before she struck the ground.

“
Poe?”
he said shaking her a little. “Poe.”

Her open eyes
stared blankly toward the roiling sky and one of the keepers
screeched high overhead. Trevor leaned his face toward Poe’s
and felt her breath on his cheek.

“
Passed
out,” he said aloud and smiled with relief. “If you
can’t take the heat, get out of the abyss.”

Poe had complained
about the heat, but he didn’t feel it. Maybe the nether world
affected mortals and angels differently.

Maybe it doesn’t
affect me because I’m supposed to be here.

He didn’t
really remember his abduction by Azrael, but between what he did
recall and what his father told him, he thought it might be time for
a healthy dose of fear.

If Poe didn’t
recover, how would he get out of here?

He looked up at the
keepers wheeling through the sky above. They appeared closer now,
close enough he saw them as man-shaped creatures with wings rather
than birds. Gargoyles.

Are they coming
closer because of us or is it a coincidence?

He didn’t
want to hang around to find out.

Trevor lay Poe
down, careful not to bang her head on the stony ground, then walked
to the cliff; its sheer face looked an impossible climb without
equipment, even without an incapacitated angel on his hands. He
thought about leaving her to search for help, but he banished it
immediately. Forget what might happen to her, what kind of help
would he find in Hell?

Trevor turned from
the cliff and looked across the boulder-strewn plain toward the
chain-gangs of damned souls marching across it. They trudged slowly,
like they had no real destination or desire to get there. They also
didn’t look dangerous, not with their hands and feet chained,
at least.

“
That
way.”

He returned to Poe,
checked her breathing, then worked his arms under her shoulders and
knees. Before standing, he took a couple of breaths, preparing
himself for the strain of her weight, but when he stood, he found
her quite light. And touching her didn’t bring the same
sensation he’d felt before.

“
Not
good.”

He put it from his
mind—worrying wouldn’t help.

His first steps
carrying Poe were unsteady, but he soon found his footing. He
dragged his feet as he walked, sending loose rock and gravel
skittering ahead, and he glanced up frequently, tracking the keepers
as they flew overhead.

Closer.
Definitely closer.

He increased his
pace to as fast as he dared, careful not to lose his footing on the
loose stones. The rocks his steps sent clattering across the ground
sounded unnaturally loud, each impact of stone against stone echoing
in his head like a bowling ball thundering down the alley. Ahead of
him, the lines of damned souls looked to have heard the ruckus and
amended their path to intercept him.

“
That’s
not good.”

Trevor veered
further to his right to avoid the creatures he presumed had once
been healthy, and perhaps happy, living things. Despite their
languid pace, the distance between them closed. A keeper screeched
above, too close for comfort; Trevor forced himself not to look up
and veered harder right.

He almost walked
over the edge of the canyon before he noticed it.

A chasm capable of
making the Grand Canyon blush with inadequacy stretched out at his
feet. The far side looked miles away, the bottom hidden by a swirl
of thick, white mist—if a bottom existed at all.

“
Shit.”

Trevor looked back.
Impossibly, the souls were ten yards away. He shuffled away from the
edge and from the chain gang, his breath short, nervous bursts from
the effort of carrying Poe.

And fear. This
wasn’t like doing a back flip off your friend’s garage
or eating something unstomachable on a dare. This was damnation,
eternity.

The first hand on
his shoulder startled him. He pulled away jerkily, teetering on the
edge of losing his balance as Poe’s dead weight shifted in his
arms. Then the others were on him and he saw their unspeakable
despair. Their mouths drooped in exaggerated expressions like
ghostly Halloween masks, their eyes burned into him, pleading for
help, for relief. Their uniformly gray skin looked like steak gone
bad; their bodies and limbs were strangely elongated as though
they’d been stretched on a rack.

Trevor gasped air
in through his mouth, tried to pull away from their groping, but
they outnumbered him too badly.

“
Get
away,” he yelled, twisting and turning. “Leave us
alone.”

Long
fingers brushed Poe’s hair, stroked her cheek, caressed her
arm. Shoulders bumped him, hands pushed him, but none sought to
touch him directly. They all wanted to contact the angel in his
arms.

“
P-p-p-,”
one of them stuttered with a mouth unused to forming words.

“
Oh,”
another groaned. “Oh.”

The others in the
group surrounding them—thirty, maybe more—added their
unpracticed voices, increasing the volume and settling into a chant.

“
P-p-p-,”
the first group stuttered.

“
Oh.
Oh,” the second groaned.

Trevor looked
frantically from one slack face to another, glanced over his
shoulder. Nowhere to go but down.

How will we get
out? Where can I go? What--

The cadence of the
souls’ chant interrupted his thoughts. The syllables connected
in his head.

“
P-p.”

“
Oh.
Oh.”

“
P-p.”

“
Oh.
Oh.”

“
P.”

“
Oh.”

“
P.”

“
Oh.”

The creatures
weren’t stuttering and moaning, they were combining their
voices to speak as best they could.

They’re
saying her name!

He jerked her away
from their reaching hands, the aching muscles of his arms suddenly
aware of the weight he carried. His feet stirred a low cloud of dust
as he shuffled away until his heel hung over the edge of the chasm.

Nowhere else to
go.

His pulse hammered
in his ears, nearly drowning the chant of the damned souls. They
pressed toward him and he could only hold his ground as they pawed
he angel, touching her, caressing her. They didn’t seem to
want to hurt her, but how could he be sure?

“
P.”

“
Oh.”

One of them wrapped
its long, gray fingers around her arm and tugged, testing his hold.
Another grabbed her ankle, another her wrist. Together they pulled
and Trevor stuttered forward a step trying to keep them from
wrenching her from his grip. He should have been relieved to take a
step away from the abyss, but the prospect of losing Poe to this
mob—losing his guide, his way out and possibly his father’s
last hope—sent relief skittering into the clutches of fear and
panic.

“
No.”

He pulled back and
the hands gripping Poe let go, making him stumble back a step, two.
With the second, his foot touched empty air.

The fall happened
in slow motion. Trevor canted backward, his gaze locked on the souls
directly in front of him. Their expressions didn’t change—no
surprise, shock, or regret—only maybe deeper disappointment in
their eyes as what they saw as their possible redemption slipped
over the edge.

Trevor tumbled
backwards, the gray, despairing faces vanishing, replaced by angry
clouds that made him miss the sun. He closed his eyes as the
stinking air enveloped him, pulled him down toward the mist he knew
swirled below hiding...what? Rocks? Monsters? Nothing?

Death.

Wind flapped his
hair by his ears, and he imagined his mom and dad—not his
parents how they were now, but how he remembered them: together and
happy, as far as he’d known. He thought of the Tinker Toys he
and Ric spent hours playing with, building cars and towers, simple
structures for a young boy to enjoy. He thought of his mother taking
him to soccer practices—a time he’d loved in his youth
but lost interest in as he grew.

Why do things
have to change?

And then the
falling stopped.

He gripped Poe
tighter against his chest and opened his eyes. The tortured sky
hovered above; the sheer chasm wall floated beside him; his hair no
longer whipped his cheeks. He felt arms under him—powerful,
muscular arms supporting him the way he held Poe—and he
glimpsed black wings flapping on either side of him, each stroke
pulling them up out of the abyss.

Trevor kept his
eyes fixed on the canyon wall sliding past as they rose. He didn’t
want to see what held him. In Hell, it couldn’t possibly be
better than falling to his death.

They floated up
past the edge of the cliff and he saw the faces of the souls who had
inadvertently caused their fall. This time, he saw their expressions
change, the slack-cheeked desperation and despair shifting to fear
bordering on terror. The souls shuffled away from the cliff, their
chant ended, the chains binding them at ankle and wrist clanking.

Whatever carried
Trevor and Poe lifted them thirty feet beyond the cusp of the canyon
and the souls threw their heads back to watch. From above, Trevor
saw how wrong he’d been about their numbers; where he thought
the damned numbering thirty or forty, there were thousands of gray,
fearful faces staring at them and the creature holding them.

The thing sank back
toward the ground, its descent sending the souls shuffling back with
a clatter of chains. It landed and set Trevor down, Poe still in his
arms. The teenager stumbled away and the crowd of souls gasped, but
he kept his balance and resisted the urge to turn and gaze upon his
rescuer for fear it might also be his executioner.

Or worse.

“
P,”
half the crowd before him began quietly.