All Who Wander Are Lost (An Icarus Fell Novel) (4 page)

“
It
matters not how a man’s body dies when it is the soul’s
time to go on.”

“
That
doesn’t answer my question.”

“
Does
it not?”

I bit down hard
enough that the cords in my neck stood out. The prickle on my skin
vanished taking with it the thrill in my stomach and the shortened,
excited breath the archangel’s presence brought. Their
disappearance left anger and guilt alone to brood over my actions,
my decisions. And Mike’s.

“
This
isn’t what I signed up for,” I seethed between clenched
teeth. “I’m not your goddamned tool.”

“
No,
Icarus Fell, you are my God-saved tool.”

His comment spun my
brain in a tight little circle. It took a moment to regain my
equilibrium as a wave of nausea swept through my midsection.

“
I’m
supposed to save people, not kill them,” I said, much of the
gusto gone from my voice. “Too many people died because of
me.”

“
You
did save him.” Mikey tipped his head indicating the spot where
the detective and his escort were a minute before. “What is
the problem?”

“
The
problem is: if I didn’t kill him, I wouldn’t have needed
to harvest him.”

The archangel
appeared to take one step but suddenly stood directly in front of
me, his chest brushing mine. The fierce heat radiating from him
brought sweat to my brow instantly. I looked up into his face; I’d
estimated Mikey at six and a half feet tall but, as he stood before
me, he seemed considerably taller. His heat leaked into my chest,
seeped through my clothes and flesh, warmed my internal organs, and
threatened to boil my blood.

Did he mean for it
to calm me or discourage me? It accomplished both. And more.

“
God’s
universe is a place of give and take, but it is He alone who gives
and takes. You, like all others, are part of the mechanism He uses
to do so.”

“
I’m
no killer,” I snapped and, before putting thought to my
action, shoved against Mike’s chest with both hands.

Really bad idea. I
may as well have pushed the Empire State building. Michael remained
stationary as the shove jammed my wrists back painfully, then sent
me to the floor directly on my tail bone, rocketing a flare of pain
up my spine. When I looked up a second later, the archangel already
loomed over me.

“
Every
effect has a cause.” He knelt in front of me and the fire in
his eyes felt like lasers burning into mine. “Every action a
result. Do you think nothing you do has consequences? Do you think
you live this second life—this gift I gave you—without
connection to any other living being?”

I
stared at him, breathless. My head might have moved in a gesture
signifying I didn’t think that was the case, but I was trying
so hard to keep from shaking, I couldn’t be sure. I searched
desperately for a sarcastic response but came up lacking. Between
the jarring impact of falling on my ass and the archangel’s
proximity, my senses were rattled almost to the point of
uselessness. He could have told me Martians had invaded New Orleans
or that the
Titanic
was
a rowboat and I’d have agreed with him.

“
Get
up,” he said as he stood.

I scrambled to my
feet wanting nothing more at that moment than to make him happy with
me. He grabbed my arm, his fingers hot as embers, but they didn’t
burn. Instead, electricity coursed through me like I’d been
struck by lightning. My body stiffened, eyeballs rolled back in
their sockets. My eyes closed and I felt as though we were moving.

When I pried my
eyelids open, the patio furniture warehouse was gone and I had to
squint against the daylight. We stood on a busy street corner, a
place downtown I’d have recognized if the archangel’s
mode of transportation hadn’t left my head spinning.

“
Where...where
are we?” I ventured through dried lips.

He raised his
finger and pointed. Across the street, obscured by traffic flowing
past, a woman with long, chestnut hair stood holding hands with a
five-year-old boy. She watched the cars zipping by, waiting for a
break so they could cross; the boy held a small toy, something tiny
enough for him to conceal in his left hand.

Should I know
these people?

I didn’t
think so. Why would he bring me here?

“
Why
are we here?”

The words were
barely clear of my lips when the boy dropped his toy—a red
dinky car, it turned out. It tumbled from his hand, bounced once on
the edge of the curb, pirouetted in the air, and came to rest in the
street. The boy released his mother’s hand and bent to
retrieve it but over-balanced. The woman shrieked as her son fell in
front of traffic. She leaped from the curb and caught the boy under
his arms, threw him clear of the on-coming car which struck her
before the driver had time to remember his car had brakes. The
impact catapulted her ten yards, flying over the boy, until her head
impacted a light post and flipped her body three hundred-and-sixty
degrees like a rag doll caught in a wind storm.

My mouth fell open.

Pedestrians jumped
away from the woman’s body, one man narrowly avoiding contact
with her ruined head. The boy lay on the sidewalk wailing, his arm
scraped when his mother threw him to safety, no idea she’d
given her life to save him. As her body came to a stop in a jumbled
heap, her soul separated from it and a man in a black trench coat
and hat pulled down over his eyes stepped out of the crowd. He
ignored the child and the woman’s corpse, instead making his
way toward the woman’s soul where she stood halfway between
the boy and her body, looking from one to the other, unsure what to
do.

I recognized the
man immediately.

“
Carrion,”
I blurted and went to step off the curb.

I didn’t
think I’d get there before him to rescue her from a trip to
Hell, but I’d give it my best try. Or would have if Michael’s
hand on my arm didn’t stop me. The shock of his touch
stiffened my body again and the world went blank.

Upon the return of
my senses, I found the sun still shining, but the harsh smell of car
exhaust had been replaced by the bite of brine in the air. I turned
to ask Mikey what-the-Hell happened, but the words never formed.
Water stretched around us in every direction—water, water
everywhere as Samuel Taylor Coleridge said in his poem, or Bruce
Dickinson from Iron Maiden quoted in their Mariner-inspired song. I
glanced at my feet and was shocked to find water beneath us, too.

“
How...?”

No point finishing
the question—what do silly things like the laws of nature mean
to an archangel? I might not know an angel’s full capabilities
but by now you’d think I’d at least expect the
unexpected. No quick learner, me; another of my shortfalls.

I searched the
horizon and saw nothing: no boats, no land, no wayward surfers or
swimmers; nary a threatening shark fin cut through the water.

Maybe he brought
me here for the view.

“
There.”

I’d have
referred to the craft plummeting toward the ocean as a Cessna, but I
don’t know much about planes. A plume of black smoke trailed
behind the single engine, concealing the cockpit and leaving a
widening smudge across the sky like squid ink in water. As it
plunged seaward, I imagined how the pilot must feel watching death
approach, knowing he couldn’t prevent it. Sort of how I’d
felt with a gorilla-sized mugger on my back plunging a knife into my
kidneys.

Nice to have
something in common with the people you work with.

The plane hit two
hundred meters away with the biggest splash I’ve ever seen,
like a mechanical giant belly-flopping from the high-diving board.
We rose and dipped with the wave but my shoes remained dry—the
pilot wasn’t so lucky. The impact obliterated the craft,
sending pieces of airplane shooting into the sky. When the wave
settled, a million pieces of debris bobbed on the surface of the
sea, one of them the body of a man.

“
We
should help him.”

I said the words
already knowing they were meaningless. It’s not my job to help
not in the paramedic sense of the word, but I meant his soul, not
his body. Mikey remained silent. Seconds later, a not-quite-opaque
figure sat up from the dead pilot, using his corpse as a life raft.
I looked from the spirit to Mike and back. I hadn’t received a
scroll with the man’s name, but that didn’t mean he
should be left to...whatever happens to souls left alone too long.

I took one step
away from the archangel and went headlong into the sea; salt water
filled my mouth and nose, gagging me; cold assaulted my flesh. I
thrashed and struggled, so surprised by the need to swim that I
forgot how. My head broke the surface giving me a second to gulp a
breath past the briny taste in my mouth before I went under again.
The first time I died, the knife wounds were unexpected and painful,
but drowning was an entirely different kind of trauma. I kicked and
stroked as my mind reeled, wondering if I could die again.

Michael pulled me
out with one hand, dangling me above the water like a fishing trip
trophy—the one he wished had gotten away. I sputtered until my
lungs cleared and breath filled my chest again.

“
There
is nothing you can do.”

I barely heard his
words above the buzzing in my ears. After hanging there shaking my
head to clear the water, I realized the noise wasn’t an audio
reaction to my near-second-death experience, but the sound of an
outboard motor.

Mikey set me back
beside him and I looked across the still-undulating sea at a speed
boat which, in keeping with its name, approached rapidly. Its black
hull cut through the water; two black-clad men piloted the boat
toward the crash site and its floating non-survivor.

Carrions. Again.

The boat pulled up
beside the soul floating on his corpse-canoe and one of the Carrions
leaned over the side and offered his hand. The man’s spirit
accepted eagerly, like a drowning man offered a hand, strangely
enough. If he knew where his rescuers intended to take him, he
probably wouldn’t have been so keen. They pulled him in, the
motor roared, and they sped off toward the horizon.

With the boat’s
wake lapping beneath our feet, I turned to demand an explanation,
but the world wavered before I opened my mouth, then faded to black.
In the darkness, I wondered if the world would return or if this was
my final punishment.

†‡†

I paced, amending
my path occasionally to avoid errant umbrella stands and waterproof
cushions fallen from their piles. Anger and guilt roiled and twisted
in my gut; I breathed deep, attempting to control it. There was
nothing to gain by venting my ire at the archangel, I’d
learned that lesson. Michael stood nearby, arms crossed, waiting.
Finally, I stopped and faced him, mimicking his pose.