All Who Wander Are Lost (An Icarus Fell Novel) (50 page)

Where’s
Father Dominic?

“
I
wouldn’t change a thing, Icarus.”

Did she read my
thoughts or infer them from my sarcasm? Could have been either. In
my after-death, my thoughts had been read by more people—angels—than
I felt comfortable with, one more didn’t matter.

My mother stepped
forward and crouched in front of my son.

“
Trevor,”
she whispered into his face.

He didn’t
react.

She shifted herself
to perch on the edge of the pew beside him and put her hand on his
cheek. Nothing happened for a few seconds and impatience built in my
gut—Azrael and the boy hadn’t given me a deadline, but I
felt like time grew short. My lead was shrinking, my deficit
growing; I felt the need to get away as soon as possible.

I opened my mouth
to hurry her along, but the flutter of Trevor’s eyelids
interrupted me. His eyes opened and he gazed at the nun seated
beside him as she took her hand away from his face. Trevor licked
his lips like a man desperately in need of water, then pivoted his
head toward me. His eyes lit up at the sight of me and his lips
moved.

I’m not a
very good lip reader but the lack of words coming from his mouth
forced me into the role.

“
Dad,”
his lips said without sound.

I smiled.

“
Trevor,”
I replied, though I chose to actually make a noise.

He looked to my
mother and back. His lips moved again but still made no sound.

“
What’s
wrong with him?”

My mother shook her
head minutely but said nothing, leaving me feeling either deaf or
the only one amongst us with the ability to speak. I knelt in front
of Trevor, hands on his knees, and looked up at him.

“
Say
something.”

I gave him a gentle
shake as if he was one of those toy cows that moo when you jostle
them. His lips moved again but he neither mooed nor spoke.

“
Trevor.”

My mother put her
hand over mine, and when I faced her, she was looking at me with
even more sadness in her eyes than usual.

“
He
has been through much.”

At least I’m
not the last guy in the world with a voice.

Trevor’s eyes
flickered back and forth between us with the smallest hint of
realization showing in them. Worry fluttered in my chest.

What have I done
to him.

“
It’ll
be okay, Trev. I’ll get you out of here.”

I stood and a knot
threatened my calf but I shook it out before it took hold. After
another survey of the church—the image in the stained glass
window showed a distinctly more pornographic version of a
not-so-virgin Mary and the Christ-on-the-cross leered like the Joker
in a Batman comic—I offered Trevor my hand.

“
We
have to get out of here.”

He accepted my help
while my mother remained perched on the edge of the pew looking up
at us. Her lips pulled into a smile tinged with pain.

“
Come
with us.”

She shook her head,
the white cotton bib of her habit brushing against the black tunic.

“
No,
I told you already.”

“
But
why not?”

She looked down at
her hands in her lap, studied the way her fingers smoothed the
creases in her tunic before looking up again and answering.

“
I
don’t deserve to be anywhere else.”

“
Bullshit.”

She fixed me with a
look that reminded me of Sister Mary-Therese, the kind of look meant
to remind me nuns don’t like swearing.

Too bad.

“
What
happened wasn’t your fault,” I said.

“
Wasn’t
it?”

“
No,
it wasn’t.” I hesitated, examined her expression. “Was
it?”

She shrugged,
looked back at her lap again, then forced herself to keep her eyes
on mine.

“
One
can always say no.”

“
To
an archangel? Do you really believe that?”

Trevor shifted at
my side but I dismissed the movement as an active teen tired of
standing in one spot. Instead, I concentrated on my mother, awaited
her answer. I thought of my encounter with Piper in a cave in Hell.
Could I have said no to her?

I didn’t
want to.

Maybe I knew what
she meant more than I wanted to let myself believe.

“
Guilt
isn’t the only reason, is it?” I asked.

She shook her head.
Her eyes looked glossy, as though she teetered on the edge of tears
but held them back.

“
You
love him.”

“
Yes.”

The word held
laughter and happiness, a joy I didn’t expect in her voice.
The bastard angel-of-death took her from the world and condemned her
to live for eternity in Hell, and here she was, happy. Didn’t
make sense. Shouldn’t she be angry? Pissed off in the highest
degree? I was.

Trevor shuffled his
feet beside me, runners rubbing on stained carpet.

Neither my mother
nor I shifted our gazes and the longer I looked into her eyes, the
more I saw the love she felt for Azrael. I didn’t understand
it, but there it was. I began to understand my anger came from how I
felt about her being taken from the world, and her feelings had
nothing to do with mine. I might go to the end of my days hating
Azrael for taking my mother away, but in the end, she was happy.
Probably happier than if he hadn’t. I sensed an apology
bubbling up at the back of my throat so I clamped my lips shut to
make sure it didn’t escape.

I wasn’t
quite ready to give up my anger.

Trevor moved again
and this time my mother glanced away. When she did, her eyes widened
and the flicker of love I’d seen in them disappeared. Not what
you expect from a grandmother gazing upon her grandson.

Crap.

I felt the hand on
my shoulder and caught the whiff of singed hair before turning my
head. With the pressure of the touch on me and the odor in my
nostrils, I didn’t really need to look to see who’d
taken Trevor’s place beside me.

“
Father
Dominic,” I said doing my best to sound nonchalant. He stood
close, invading my personal space. Trevor looked on from the other
side of him, safe for now, it seemed. Dominic smiled his
sharp-toothed, blood-smeared smile. “What are you doing here?”

“
You
have to take me back.”

“
Haven’t
we already had this conversation?”

His grip tightened;
I gritted my teeth, determined not to show pain.

“
Let
me rephrase,” the hellish priest said through clenched teeth.
“You
will
take
me with you.”

I glanced past him
at Trevor who had backed away a couple of steps, increasing his
margin of safety slightly.

Good boy.

“
Let
me rephrase, also: no.”

The muscles of his
jaw flexed beneath the medium-rare skin of his face and I swear the
bumps on is forehead—horns doing their best to force their way
through?—grew a little. If he’d been a cartoon, steam
would have spewed from his ears. The thought almost made me giggle
but the way he grabbed me by the front of my shirt and shook me like
a rat in the jaws of a terrier loosened the expression from my face.

“
Take
me,” he screamed, spittle flying against my cheeks.

The sides of my
mouth pulled taut in an expression I probably wouldn’t have
characterized as a smile. Nasty smirk maybe. Vengeful grin, perhaps.

“
Fuck
you.”

His forehead
crunched against the bridge of my nose and pain exploded through my
face. I jerked my head back already feeling warm blood on my top lip
and had to blink a couple of times to clear my suddenly fuzzy
vision.

“
You
will take me back with you. It’s your fault I’m here and
you will fix it.”

I didn’t feel
anything like smiling this time but I did manage to shake my head
which felt like it belonged to someone else. Given the pain, I
wished whoever it belonged to would take it back.

The priest shook me
again, rattling my teeth. I grabbed his wrists, tried to pull his
hands from my shirt but his hold on me was too solid.

“
Take.
Me.”

He punctuated each
word with a solid jolt. My nose throbbed, blood ran into my mouth, I
felt my brain slap against the inside of my skull. If I didn’t
make him stop, it might end up falling out of my ear. Turns out
having your thinker rattled around against your cranium isn’t
the ideal situation for coming up with clever plans, so I continued
attempting to pry his fingers away.

No luck.

The priest’s
eyes bulged in their sockets, his lips pulled back from his teeth
far enough to reveal tattered gums and shit stuck between his
molars. He breathed rotten breath into my face making me gag.

“
Icarus
Fell,” he said with an ominous tone. “Take me to Heaven
or face the consequences.”

My mind flashed
back through all the consequences this man had doled out in my
youth: locking me in the lightless closet, forcing me to stand in
the sign of the cross for hours, the slender switch he used to
punish me when I did something against God. Once he fashioned a
crown of thorns out of a length of barbed wire he’d purchased
for the purpose and made me wear it all day.