Secrets of the Hanged Man (Icarus Fell #3) (An Icarus Fell Novel) (26 page)

The instant our gazes met, my lips parted and I sucked a hard breath between my teeth. It hissed through the tight space, flirting with a whistle, and snow flakes drawn by my inhalation brushed against my mouth. Cold and refreshing, they spoke of survival and promised real life for me again one day.

I didn’t believe them.

A thin line of vapor drifted from the beast’s nose, snaking between snow flakes and across the space between us, but it was different than when I did it to the evil priest. That time, a white cloud of mist reminiscent of breath on a winter day flowed out of him; a thick, red effluvium rolled and boiled from the creature’s mouth, moving and writhing like a living thing.

My eyes widened, panic jolting through me. I didn’t know what crept toward me, or what it might do to me, but I suddenly didn’t want it touching my lips, entering my lungs. Despite my wishes, it forced itself into my mouth.

***

Trevor didn’t recognize the girl, but her shadowy appearance meant she wasn’t alive, and her demeanor suggested she wanted to help. What good could a little girl be? Icarus seemed to have the same thought as he made his way across the snowy lawn toward the great black beast that had once been a teenage boy like himself.

“Dad! No!”

Trevor scrambled to gain his feet, but Rae grabbed his arm and dragged him back down between her and Ashton. The teen struggled to think what he could do to help—maybe no more than tackle his father to the ground, the way his mother did to him—but Icarus’ involvement almost always meant bad things. For him, especially, but perhaps for them all.

He pulled against Rae’s grip, but she held him tight.

“
Ashton. Help him.”

Trevor looked from his father lurching toward the thing to his soon-to-be stepfather. Ashton’s eyes bulged and red welts burned on his neck where Icarus had choked him.

“Ashton!”

He tore his gaze from the struggle in the middle of the lawn and looked at Trevor with little more than fear in his expression and the teen saw that neither Rae nor Ashton would provide Icarus any help.

He looked back to the beast. It grabbed the girl by the throat, lifted her off the ground, and Trevor noticed a shadow around her, some trick played by the swirling snow and cloud-muted winter sun. The thing’s tail flicked over the ground, cutting a furrow in the snow. A rip in Cory’s shirt stretched wide across its broad back, revealing stubs forming on its shoulder blades and, without understanding why at first, Trevor knew those growths would sprout to become wings.

He’d seen a similar creature before.

The three missing days. I was in Hell.

Memories flooded back to him: Poe, the pit keeper, the souls, the boy. How did he forget? Something else, too, something the boy without a name told him. It niggled at the back of his mind, edging toward remembrance, but he lost it when his father leaped for the creature and caught it by the neck. It turned, bringing its profile into Trevor’s view, and he recognized nothing of his friend left in the face, nothing of the kid the other kids had nicknamed Scarecrow.

A second later, a thick, red mist oozed out of the creature’s face, emanating from its mouth, its nose, around its eyes, crawling across the air toward Trevor’s father.

A red fog stinking of death.

I tried to stop, to pull away, but my lungs refused to cease drawing the foul air toward me. My head balked at the possibility of turning and saving this shambles I considered a life and I wondered: once you’re dead, how can anything be called a life?

Probably it couldn’t, but it was all I had left. The little girl I wanted to save had shown me I still had my humanity; the teenage boy concerned for my well-being loved me, and reminded me I could love, too. The guilt for deserting Poe, the twinge of sadness in my gut every time I looked at Rae, even the splinter of dislike Ashton forced into me—weren’t these things indicative of a life?

Maybe. Maybe not.

My gaze remained locked on the creature’s yellow eyes, its black-slit pupils, the red vapor crossing the last sliver of space between us. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed a thick, inky haze gathering around Dee, but I didn't have the time to worry for both of our souls just then.

The mist touched my lips, forced its way into my mouth. It tasted vile and bitter, a vulgar, viscous smoothie concocted of rotten meat, bile, and mud. I tried to gag it out, but the fog paralyzed the muscles in my throat. It entered my lungs, diffused into my blood, rushed to my brain, and took me places no man should ever have to go.

Hell flashed through my mind: damned souls tortured and screaming. Gore splashed on walls, limbs ripped out of sockets, wicked blades tinted with rust, torture devices of such horrendous use, human minds couldn’t conceive them.

But other things flashed amongst the visions of carnage and mayhem, fragments of a life this creature never knew, but the boy inside did. Woven between the shrill screams and desperate pleading, I found regrets and emotions the same as those felt by any person who lived a life they wished had been different.

Funerals, regrets, suicide attempts, resignation. A boy who’d once loved his mother and mourned his father, who’d learned hate the way anyone else does, but who’d given into it like few do. A dead baby sister—the child in the photo at Meg’s—aunts, uncles, cousins, stepfathers.

Detective Williams. Meg Medlin-Williams.

The cop who so badly wanted to incarcerate me for the deaths perpetrated by Father Dominic had been Cory’s stepfather, and the teen had been in the alley the night I harvested him. Williams died because of him, not me. Small consolation as my final end drew near.

The redness penetrated deeper, flashing further pictures of death and despair, death and retribution, death and delight through my mind. Behind the mental show, I sensed the creature’s eyes burning into me, and a blackness creeping around it. The first time I died, there had been whiteness and light, this time, it seemed it would be the opposite. The end of my existence.

Instead, it turned out to be a little girl named Dido.

The creature jerked its gaze away from mine and to the girl held aloft in its other hand. With its eyes off me, it felt like a sword inserted into me and twisted by a vicious hand had been yanked free. It hurt, but considerably less so.

I forced my weary eyes toward Dee. Lost in the visions and regret over how I’d lived my afterlife, I’d nearly forgotten the spirit I’d been so set on saving. If I’d thought of her, I’d have assumed the creature’s grip to have broken her little spirit neck by now, or squeezed her little spirit breath out of her, but it did neither.

Someone still hung from the creature's grasp, but it wasn't Dido. Not quite true: it was, then it wasn’t, then it wasn’t some more, then it was again.

Different faces flashed across her countenance, changing with a fluidity and speed which made it impossible to identify one before another took its place. Female, male, young old. Brief as they were, I recognized a few: Meg, Shaun, the baby from the photo, Dallas, and one that surprised the crap out of me.

Poe.

They affected the creature, too. It began to shake. The thing’s grip on the front of my shirt transferred its quaking through me, chattering my teeth and shooting pain through every nerve in my body until I cried out in a pitiful attempt to relieve it.

On the bright side, the shaking loosened its grip and the black fingers slipped away. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the energy to keep from slumping to the ground in a messy pile.

Not until I was curled up there like a babe who wanted to head back to the womb did I realize it wasn’t the creature shaking, but the earth shook beneath us all.

The tremor rattled my bones and made me consider that perhaps actual death might be better than this option. My fingers pushed through the thin crust of snow, digging into the grass and dirt beneath, holding on to keep from being thrown off the world should the quake worsen. A second later, a sound like the ass of a giant’s pants tearing reverberated the air, then rock grinding against rock, the clatter of tiny landslides, and the shaking ceased.

I lay in my ex-wife’s yard, waiting for the end to draw nigh, my breath held and my screaming muscles tensed. When the ground acted as though it would behave itself, I struggled myself up on my elbows and glanced across the lawn at Trevor. He crouched on his knees with Rae’s arms wrapped around his chest, holding him back; Ashton sat with his back against the rickety fence, a dazed look in his eyes. I raised my hand, indicating my son should stay back because I had everything under control, though I felt nothing of the sort.

I drew a deep, painful breath into my already agonized chest and swung around to see what trouble Dee and Scarecrow had gotten themselves into while I wasn’t paying attention.

The quake must have shaken her loose of the creature’s grip, too, for they stood a few yards apart. The tip of beast-Cory’s tail flicked and slashed back and forth across the lawn, tearing bare swaths in the snow and throwing up divots of grass and dirt. That would upset Rae because she loved her lawn, but the three-foot wide crack running from the street to within six inches from where Scarecrow stood might distract her from the chunks his tail knocked away.

The creature roared at Dee loud enough to hurt my ears and with enough force to move her hair. She stood her ground, unflinching, her gaze holding the beast’s as her face scrolled through those different people one after another after another with dizzying speed. I couldn’t keep up with whom I saw, but Cory must have, because it angered him further.

The beast moved a taloned foot, the muscles in its leg flexing and tightening, readying to lunge at Dido. Despite the throbbing pain overtaking my body, I resolved no to let him take her. If this soul was lost and I survived, how could I live with myself?

“No!”

I jumped into action, launching myself at the big, black demon-thing as best my aches and pains allowed, which equated to stumbling around in the manner of a drunk with somewhere important to be. Trevor yelled, but the blood pounding in my ears kept me from discerning what he said.

As I bungled my way toward the creature, Dee raised her foot two inches and stomped it down hard, as though she thought throwing a tantrum the best way to make him stop.

It didn’t, but it did start the ground moving again.

It shook with an earth-shattering roar, mostly because the little girl’s foot shattered the earth. The three-foot-wide crack stretching from the sidewalk yawned wider, swallowing half of Rae’s yard as the quake threw us off balance—all of us except Dee. She stood with her fists clenched at her sides, gaze pinned on the hellacious thing standing in front of her, biding her time. The instant Scarecrow raised a foot to maintain his equilibrium, she moved.

In an instant, I understood what she intended: the fissure ended right behind him, steam and an eerie glow emanating from its depths. She planned to sacrifice herself to save the rest of us, perhaps save the world.

But I wouldn’t let her go.

I lunged, too, every muscle in my body shrieking at me for having done so. As soon as I did, the speed of the world down-shifted a couple of gears into some sort of special effects slow-mo. Behind me, Trevor yelled again, his voice deep and drawn out by the slowing of time, and I heard Rae’s voice, too. My heart twinged as my feet fought to gain purchase on the slippery lawn with the knowledge I’d probably never see him again, that this could be the end of it all for me.

Did I tell him I loved him last time we talked?

Dee’s shoulder hit the creature square in the gut, the force of impact folding him in two like a cheap tackling dummy, but the demon refused to give in without a fight. It raked her back, nails tearing gashes through her shirt and into her ghostly flesh. It clawed the ground with taloned feet, scrabbling desperately to halt its backward progress, but the pit was too close behind it.

They tumbled over the edge before I got to them, but I sprang anyway, reaching out with both hands, ignoring the searing torment it caused right down to my toes. I missed grabbing her arm. I missed grabbing his leg.

My feet went from under me and my chest slammed hard on the ground. A rib snapped with a muted pop, but the pain I already experienced and my intent on grasping something made it unnoticeable.

To my surprise, the creature’s tail ended up in my hands.

I squeezed my fingers tight around it, the black scales covering it burning me, abrading the flesh of my palms. The weight of the beast pulled me forward, sliding along the slippery lawn, the toes of my shoes digging in to stop me and doing a piss-poor job of it.

My hands went over the edge of the fissure, followed by my forearms and elbows. The weight of the creature threatened to hyper-extend my joints, snap my bones. I gritted my teeth and held on despite the blood oozing from my palms onto my fingers making my grip slippery and precarious.

My slide continued until my arms went over the edge, wrenched downward. I managed to stop myself from going over, settling on the verge with rock and dirt digging into my armpits and my head protruding over the side, giving me a view of the crevasse’s depths.

I didn’t fancy what I saw.

Beyond the thing dangling from my hands and the ghostly young girl held in one of its clawed hands, shadows and flame whirled and twisted like living things, or once-living things. They could have been right beneath Dee’s feet or a hundred miles below; I didn’t know and didn’t want to find out.

“Dee!” Squeezing her name past my broken rib proved difficult, but I kept with it. “Dido. Can you climb up?”

“
Let go.”

I should have known she’d say that, but I wasn’t about to do what she asked. I closed my eyes with the effort of holding on, my mind grasping for what to do. The weight shifted in my hands, pulling me forward a few more inches so the top of my chest rested against the edge, and I snapped my eyelids open again.

The creature swung back and forth, its head craned on its neck to leer up at me, fire burning in its eyes. It might have been smiling, but too many wicked yellow teeth crowded its mouth to tell.

“
You cannot save her, Icarus Fell,” the thing said, its tone the sound of a limp body dragged across rocky soil.

“
Ric,” I grunted.

“
You cannot save yourself. Killing you is why I was born.”

I stared at him, wondering how a seventeen-year-old might have been born for the task of killing one created less than a year ago, but the last few inches of his tail lashed itself around my wrist, distracting me with a grip tight enough to grate my bones. It jerked in my grip, pulling me closer to the edge, and the middle of my chest with its broken rib pressed against the lip. I didn’t want to give Cory the satisfaction of screaming in pain, but I didn’t have much choice.

“Icarus! You have to let go!”

Dee sounded different, her voice thicker and fuller, like more than one person spoke. I’d have spent some time considering why but, to be honest, survival instinct kicked in. If I’d been able to take her advice and release Cory’s tail, I’d have done it. Chalk up another missed opportunity in a life full of them.

“Can’t,” I choked out. “He’s got me.”

A sound vaguely reminiscent of a laugh rolled up to me from the beast’s lips and it jerked in my grip again, pulling me another inch closer to my demise. I looked past him, hoping for encouragement from the soul for whom I’d gotten myself in this position, but found it was her movements jerking their weight in my hands.

Dee was attempting to extricate herself from the creature’s grasp.

She swung up, hit it in the jaw with her free hand, and I slid another inch or two. If she kept at it, she might liberate herself and save me, or her attempts would kill me. Another punch, another inch toward Hell.

“Ungh,” I grunted with effort. “Stop. I’m slipping.”

The grip of Scarecrow’s tail was tight enough I didn’t need to hold on to keep them from falling, but if I released my hold, my hand might pull from my arm. It cut off the blood flow, turning my fingers purple and swelling them to the size of sausages.

Dee ignored my pleas and pendulumed back and forth, swinging herself up to wrap her legs around the beast’s chest, pinning its free arm against its side. I’d have applauded the effort if it didn’t pull me forward until my gut rested against the lip. Another few inches and I’d be beyond the point of no return.

The little girl clinging to the demon proceeded to pound him in the face, each swing of her fist slipping me forward incrementally. I shifted my feet, my toes digging for purchase in the hard soil, but they slipped in snow and wet grass, and my heart slipped with them. After a life of abuse and alienation, failed marriage and failed parenthood, I’d died and been forced into a job I didn’t want, but gained my son back as a by-product of the whole sordid affair. As I slipped toward my demise, I realized I’d finally found somewhere I felt as though I belonged.