All Who Wander Are Lost (An Icarus Fell Novel) (51 page)

Enough of his
fucking consequences.

“
Kiss.
My. Ass.”

The expression on
his face took on a fleeting aspect of surprise, but rage quickly
overcame it. Saliva spilled from the corner of his mouth and I
watched it trace a path along the line of his jaw and down his chin.
I shouldn’t have allowed myself the distraction.

The priest threw me
across the room where I slammed into a pew, tipping it backward and
banging my nose. Pain blinded me. I righted myself and tried to
blink away the throb in my face as Father Dominic bore down on me.
My faulty vision clouded his features into a smear of flesh
punctuated by dark holes where his eyes should have been. He held
something I couldn’t make out in his hand, something he
brandished in the manner of a man meaning to strike.

I brought an arm up
defensively, already knowing it wouldn’t be enough to protect
me but unable to do anything else. He loomed over me, probably
enjoying the moment, until arms wrapped around him—one around
his neck, one around the top of his head. Even through the cotton
filling my head, I recognized the sleeper hold from my years
enjoying the entertainment provided by the likes of Hulk Hogan and
his wrestling cronies.

At least it was a
sleeper hold until the arms twisted Father Dominic’s head
violently and snapped his neck with the dry pop of an old twig. The
arms slipped away and the priest’s limp body slouched to the
floor.

I blinked again and
stared into the startled face of my mother.

“
Do
I deserve to go to Heaven now?”

She lowered her
eyes to look at the crumpled body of the priest. Did she know he’d
loved her in a way a man-of-the-cloth isn’t meant to love
anyone? Did she know the things he’d done to me?

I scrambled to my
feet and looked past her at Trevor leaning on the pew, watching with
wide eyes. He shivered but looked otherwise unharmed. I breathed a
relieved sigh and looked back at my mother still staring at the
priest.

“
It’s
not your fault. None of it.” I reached out to touch her
shoulder but she pulled away. “I can still take you.”

“
I
don’t want to go.”

She’d already
made it clear, but hearing the words stung anyway. I’d finally
met my mother and she didn’t want to be with me because she’d
found someone else more important to her. Difficult to accept, even
given the small amount of time we’d been together. I opened my
mouth to protest, to beg, but she cut me off.

“
You
have to go now.”

She finally looked
away from the body of Father Dominic but wouldn’t meet my
eyes. Instead, she glanced around the church as if looking for
someone hiding behind a pew or crouched behind the altar. I followed
her gaze and saw no one, but the church had changed. A crack
appeared in the wall, the pews showed signs of charring. While
Christ’s shit-eating grin remained, his cross hung askew.

“
But
we--”

“
Go,”
she shouted and the ground shook beneath my feet.

Quite the special
effect.

But it wasn’t.
The church walls quaked, pews rattled across the floor. Bricks
toppled onto the keyboard of the organ, hammering out a desperate,
discordant tune. I pushed aside the throbbing in my face, pushed
past my mother and grabbed Trevor’s arm, but I didn’t
know where to go or how to get away. The whore-Mary in the stained
glass window laughed at me, the joker-Jesus toppled to the floor.
Without thinking, I pulled Trevor past the altar and headed for the
rear entrance—it saved us once before, why not again?

As we passed
through the tapestry, I glanced back. My mother stood over Father
Dominic’s body watching us, making sure we got away.

And then the roof
of the church collapsed.

The concussion of
it hitting the floor pushed us into a hall no longer a hall. We
stumbled and fell, skidding in red-orange dirt, scraping our palms.
I quickly collected myself, got to my feet and pulled Trevor up.

I looked around at
the circle of cages and saw Michael standing by Poe’s. Azrael
and the boy stood twenty feet to his left. Two archangels and that
damn kid, together in Hell.

This can’t
be good.

Bruce
Blake-All Who Wander Are Lost

Michael stepped
away from Poe’s reach and her chest slammed painfully against
the bars forcing a grunt from her. The tips of her fingers brushed
the front of his red shirt and electricity crackled through the air.

“
Now,
now, Poe. Be calm.”

She bared her
teeth, a small growl rumbling at the back of her throat.

“
I
saw what you did,” she said, tears threatening at the edge of
her words. “I saw it.”

“
You
have gotten yourself in quite a pickle here, haven’t you?”

Poe stared at the
archangel, seething as he spoke as if he hadn’t heard what she
said. Michael looked past her over her shoulder.

“
Hello,
Piper.”

“
Michael.”

Poe looked back at
the woman. She sat on the straw rubbing her wrists where Poe had
gripped them.

“
You
know each other?”

“
Yeah,
you might say that,” Piper responded as she stood and brushed
straw off her backside.

Poe looked back to
Michael.

“
How...?”

“
Piper
followed a similar path to yours, didn’t you Piper?”

The woman grunted
in response.

“
Similar
but different,” Michael continued. “The same but
opposite.”

Poe considered
asking him to clarify but didn’t. More pressing things needed
clearing up.

“
What
are you doing here?”

“
Oh,
I am not here. An angel cannot be present in Hell.”

Poe’s breath
caught in her throat.

If an angel
can’t be in Hell, doesn’t that mean--

“
Yes.
Unfortunate, is it not? I really did like you, Poe. You were not the
best guardian, but you followed orders with enthusiasm.”

“
Told
you,” Piper muttered.

Poe suppressed the
urge to cross the cage and slap her. Instead, she remained pressed
against the bars, arms hanging loose between them.

“
But
I--,” she began before the archangel interrupted.

“
Where
is the boy?”

Poe paused a
second, confused.

“
What?”

“
The
boy, the son of Icarus. Where is he?”

“
I...I
don’t know.”

“
She
lost him again,” Piper said. She moved to the side of the cage
but kept out of Poe’s reach.

“
Again?”

“
She’s
made a habit of losing him down here.”

Poe glared at
Piper; the woman smiled back.

“
Truth
hurt?”

One step of
straw-littered cage floor passed beneath Poe’s feet before
Michael’s angel-choir voice stopped her.

“
Ladies,
I do not have time for your quarrels. Do either of you know where
the boy is?”

Poe looked back at
the archangel, her stomach doing flips in her midsection. For years
she revered this being, loved him in the way one loves an idol, but
what she’d seen in Sister Mary-Therese’s apartment—a
touch she didn’t see when it actually happened—brought
an edge of nausea and suspicion.

“
Why?”

Michael smiled.
“The boy does not belong here. His time has not yet come.”

Some of Poe’s
tension waned. Perhaps he’d come to take Trevor to safety.
Still, the lingering memory of his touch on the birth-giving nun’s
stomach clouded her thoughts. Could he be trusted?

“
Why
did you do it?”

Michael raised an
eyebrow but said nothing.

“
I
know you can read my thoughts. Why did you do it? Why did you kill
Sister Agnes?”

The archangel
didn’t answer immediately and Poe clamped her jaw tight to
keep nerves from chattering her teeth together. She wanted him to
say she’d mis-seen the events in the apartment, tell her
Azrael killed the nun to steal her soul for himself. She wanted
Michael to return to the perfect picture she carried close to her
heart: the tall, lambent doer-of-good who stood at God’s side
representing everything moral and righteous.

Pleasepleaseplease.

She stared into his
face, at his golden eyes and his hair draped over his shoulders. So
many times she’d looked at him like this and been mesmerized,
unable to speak, move or form independent thought. She felt some of
that now but a feeling approaching disgust tempered it.

Michael smiled and
said nothing, but she thought she heard his answer in his lack of
words.

“
He
didn’t kill her,” Piper said derisively. “You
did.”

Poe looked at her,
surprised, mouth agape.

“
No.
I saw him.”

“
Everyone
knows you took her soul.”

“
It
was my job. I had no choice.”