All Who Wander Are Lost (An Icarus Fell Novel)

All Who
Wander Are Lost

An
Icarus Fell Novel

by

Bruce
Blake

[email protected]

Published by Bruce Blake & Best Bitts Productions

Copyright 2012 Bruce Blake & Best Bitts Productions

First Kindle Original Edition, 2012

License Notes

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Dedication

As always, this is
for my wife and children, my reasons for everything. And to the rest
of my family for their love and support through the years.

“
Never
regret thy fall,

O Icarus of the fearless
flight

For the greatest tragedy of
them all

Is never to feel the burning
light.”

-Oscar Wilde

When your guardian
angel and her friend, the archangel Gabriel, tell you to stay put,
it’s probably a good idea to listen.

I should have, but
I have inexplicable difficulty with authority figures. It gets me in
trouble. A lot.

An old Buick sat to
the right of my motel room door looking like it hadn’t moved
in a decade or so, and it certainly hadn’t budged since I
checked in; a few other cars were parked in the motel’s lot
but there were no people. I stepped across the threshold and closed
the door behind me, the click of the lock firecracker-loud in the
winter night.

I paused. Still no
one around. I breathed deep and stepped away from the door, the
first time I’d been outside the dingy, musty-smelling room in
weeks.

A month ago, the
police found a tranny prostitute named Dante Frank dead on a bed in
a five-star hotel, hairy chest and hairless vagina exposed for the
world to see along with the biblical references his killer carved in
his flesh. Dante, whom I’d known as Danielle Francis, was the
last victim of the serial killer dubbed the Revelations Reaper by
the media. The police had a suspect in the string of killings: me.

I didn’t kill
any of them but, if the truth be told, their deaths were on me.

Forget the angels
telling me to stay indoors, the fact the local news had been
flashing an unflattering picture of my face on the screen every
night until a week ago should have kept me inside my seedy room. But
you know what they say about common sense...it ain’t so
common.

Icarus Fell: living
proof.

I didn’t
think that because they finally stopped plastering my face all over
the six o’clock news they’d stopped looking for me.
Every cop in the city likely still carried my picture like they were
at war and I was their girl waiting for them back home, but after
four weeks in my motel-room-prison, the prospect of remaining inside
held as little appeal as being girlfriend to a bunch of cops. I’d
spent every moment of the last month thinking about my role in the
deaths, wishing things were different. Another minute trapped alone
with my guilt might prove one too many.

I slipped away from
the motel and down a side street, disappearing in shadows and down
alleys wherever I could. The taste of impending snow in the early
December air fortified my lungs.

As I ranged farther
from the motel, the garbage strewn on the streets and graffiti tags
spray-painted on walls—'Big Turk Wuz Here' and other poetic
gems—became less frequent until they disappeared completely.
I’d made my way to a neighborhood where people cared, a fact
which should have rang alarm bells in my head and made me more
careful, but the lack of hookers and drug dealers lifted my spirits
and my worry ebbed taking caution along with it.

Dumb ass.

I paused at the
intersection, the lights of an approaching car reflecting on the
frost-rimed pavement as I waited to be sure it would obey the stop
sign. Without the fresh air loosening my wits, I’d have waved
him through, but freedom made my head light in the way of a
non-smoker after a few drags on a cigarette. The car’s brakes
squeaked as it rolled to a halt. I stepped off the curb and raised a
hand in thanks, squinting against the lights, but couldn’t see
the driver. Hand replaced in pocket, I continued on my way, thinking
nothing of it until I heard the hum and chatter of a power window in
need of repair.

“
Hey,
you.”

The words weren’t
spoken with the timbre of someone in need of directions. The caution
and worry the beautiful night had leeched from me flooded back; I
quickened my pace.

“
Stop.”

I broke into a run
before his engine roared and tires chirped. Cutting across a
well-manicured lawn, I hopped a fence, ran through a back yard
dominated by an inter-locking brick patio and an in-ground pool
emptied for the winter, then vaulted another fence into a rear lane,
cursing my stupidity with every step.

Despite a house
between us, I heard the car’s engine rev and labor as the
driver gave chase. I dove through a line of tall shrubs, their
branches scratching my face, and into another yard, keeping my
flight to places the car couldn’t go. Ten minutes of
fence-jumping and shrub-diving later, I emerged on a sporadically
lit street. Familiar graffiti scrolled across the side of a
building; Big Turk and his poor spelling were back. Close to my
motel. My lungs labored, the cold air hurting my chest instead of
refreshing it as a stitch in my side dug in and grabbed hold. I
stopped to catch my breath, bent at the waist, hands grasping knees
like the world’s worst marathoner run out of steam, but rest
didn’t last long. A siren wailed behind me and I forced my
legs back into action.

I darted into an
alley and the all-too-familiar stink of garbage and piss, depression
and decay hit me immediately. I’d lost so many days and nights
of my youth in alleys like this, sleeping off a bottle of vodka or
poking a needle in my arm. I forced the thought from my mind. This
was no time to self-analyze by way of shitty memories.

Tires screeched at
the mouth of the alley. I didn’t look back, my attention taken
by a figure stepping out of the shadows into my path. A Carrion, I
assumed—a human-shaped demon sent to collect souls and make my
life difficult—but I quickly realized the silhouette was
smaller and more feminine, leaving two possible people. Angels,
really. I halted a few paces beyond arm’s-reach in case I was
wrong.

“
Hey,
mister. Long time, no see.”

I recognized the
voice immediately. The angel stepped into the light and I saw her
gingerbread hair, glimpsed the freckled skin of her cheek.

“
Gabe.”

The Archangel
Gabriel is the messenger. She brings scrolls with my assignments
inscribed on them: who’s scheduled to pass, where, when, and
where to take them when it’s done.

I couldn’t
think of a worse time for her to show up.

“
Did
you miss me?”

Her pure voice
echoed off the alley walls and a chorus of swallows which always
accompanied her, but that I couldn’t see in the dark, chirped
and chittered on a fire escape overhead.

“
Don’t
have time right now, Gabe,” I said breathlessly and glanced
over my shoulder. The alley remained empty, but it wouldn’t
for much longer.

“
Here.”

She offered a
scroll which hadn’t been in her hand a second before.

“
Really,
Gabe? I don’t--” I gestured toward the alley at my back,
offered a pleading look. She shook the scroll at me and raised an
eyebrow.

I’d learned
the hard way that harvesting wasn’t the kind of job you could
slack off at; the hard way seems to be how I learn pretty much
everything. I gave in without any real fight.

My finger brushed
hers as I grasped the rolled parchment and an electric charge
prickled the hairs on my arm, bringing with it a longing to spend
time with her, to be in her presence as long as possible. I nearly
forgot the man chasing me.

“
Gabe,
I--”

She smiled and
shrugged. “You don’t have time, remember?”

Swallow wings beat
the air above my head as she walked away. I stared after her for a
second before pulling myself from the angel-induced stupor to look
at the scroll in my hand. This was my second assignment since
everything went down: the deaths, the media frenzy, the explosion at
the church. What happened to souls during my seclusion? Did they
make other arrangements or were they okay with everyone going to
Hell for a few weeks while I got my wits about me? Great vacation
for me, but kind of sucked for everyone else.

Unrolling the
scroll unnerved me. After being given one inscribed with my son’s
name, I couldn’t help but hold my breath. Probably would every
time I did it.

Shaun Williams.

I set my captive
breath free. Didn’t know him. The address scrawled on the
yellowed parchment wasn’t familiar either, but I knew the city
well enough to recognize it was close. I read the time of death,
then checked my watch.

Two minutes from
now.

The sound of shoes
hammering pavement reverberated off the alley’s brick walls. I
got my legs moving again and took a corner, feet tangling in a pile
of garbage bags and spilling me to the pavement. My shoulder hit
hard and I skidded a couple of feet along the damp ground, filth
snow-plowing onto my jacket. I scrambled to my feet, glanced ahead
and behind as the footsteps grew louder, and realized the futility
of my flight. Facing my pursuer seemed the only option. Maybe I
could talk my way out of it before my appointment came and went.

Damn it.

Bad things happen
to good people when I miss appointments. And to bad people; also,
the Swiss.

I backed down the
alley and didn’t have to wait long for the man chasing me. He
rounded the corner, avoided the garbage bags which had tripped me,
and skidded to a halt in a pool of light cast by a security light
mounted high overhead. The dress pants he wore looked a year or so
beyond their best-before date; a long wool coat covered a rumpled
dress shirt which may never have made a dry cleaner’s
acquaintance. I might have noticed more but the gun in his hand
distracted me.

“
Mr.
Fell,” he said between panted breaths. “If that’s
really your name.”