Secrets of the Hanged Man (Icarus Fell #3) (An Icarus Fell Novel) (24 page)

The old neighborhood always instilled the same feeling in me, and not the comfort of homecoming. Too much bad shit happened in the little house on the street lined with pathetic trees for good feelings. I’d battled my own demons here, been betrayed by my wife, alienated my son, been told I wasn’t his father. No good memories to be found amongst those, and my gut burbled with the unpleasant knowledge that whatever happened today would only add to that already-too-long list.

Down the block, I peeked around the corner of the house once owned by the Rileys. I guessed they didn’t live there anymore—they’d been in their seventies when I left, so I presumed the children’s toys collecting a covering of snow in the front yard didn’t belong to them—but I put little thought to the fate of my one-time neighbors. There were more pressing things to occupy me before I spent time worrying about them.

Five minutes crawled by as I watched, every second that ticked by hammering inside my skull, each one carved off my son’s lifeline. In those minutes, nothing happened. Frustrated, I hurried across the street leaving footprints in the pavement’s fresh, white covering.

I crept toward the house, the tumbling worry in my gut nauseating me. My son was inside with a monster, and possibly my ex-wife, too, who I worried I still loved despite the horrible things that happened between us.

She’s marrying someone else. I haven’t been dead a year and she’s marrying someone else.

The thought encouraged a sour flavor in my already bitter-tasting mouth. I spat a mouthful of saliva at the edge of my ex-wife’s yard—thoughtfully dedicating it to her love, Ashton—and did an awkward bent-over duck walk across the snow-rimed lawn to the fence at the side. The gate latch rattled as I opened it and I hesitated, waiting to see if I’d been heard. When no reaction came, I proceeded to the side window looking into the living room, through which I’d discovered Rae’s relationship with her new fellow after my death.

Another crappy memory to add to the list.

With my back pressed against the wall, I edged up to the glass and snatched a peek inside. In that glimpse, I saw a messy living room and nothing else, so I checked again.

Messy was an understatement.

The one remaining lamp we’d gotten as part of the deal when we bought the living room furniture more than a decade before lay smashed on the floor, finally joining its mate I’d broken in an alcohol-induced anger soon after we got the set. The couch cushions were flung across the room and the chair tipped up on its side; magazines normally spread in neat fans on the coffee table were ripped apart and the pages thrown everywhere; a leg broken from the table protruded from one wall.

Panic burst within me as I nearly impaled myself on the gate rushing back through it, hurrying to the front door. I rattled the knob and found it locked, pissing me off and making me more worried. As I concentrated on my intermittent lock opening abilities, I kept telling myself that, though the living room was a mess, I’d seen no blood.

I failed once at unlocking the door, twice, and gave up. The bottom of my shoe hit the door with a wooden thud that reverberated up my leg and sent a shock of pain through my calf.

Kicking a door open is not as easy as it looks in the movies.

I kicked it again with the distinct sound of wood splitting, but the stubborn thing refused to cooperate. My third attempt sent it flying open and I stumbled through, careless as I rushed into the living room that appeared to have been upended by a tornado. I stared at the mess, scouring it for clues.

“Trevor?” The cliché simile that came to me was ‘silent as a tomb,’ so I forced it from my mind for obvious reasons. “Rae?”

I took a few steps into the room, tracking wetness and snow behind me, kicking aside stray pages of
People
magazine and
Better Homes and Gardens
. A page detailing how to de-cluttering your life stuck to the tread of my shoe.

“
Trevor!?”

“
Hello, ‘Uncle Ric.’ We meet again.”

I spun toward the voice, already knowing it didn’t belong to Trevor, and saw Scarecrow standing in the doorway to the dining room. He appeared to sport a nasty five o’clock shadow, but it only took a second to realize whiskers weren’t responsible, scales were.

“Where’s Trevor?”

“
Perhaps I should call you Icarus? Or harvester?”

I set my jaw, hands balled into fists at my sides. I didn’t have any idea how, but I was going to get rid of this guy.

“Where is my son?”

He smiled revealing yellowed teeth, and a laugh toiled against the back of his throat. That was enough. I sprang at him, a growl rumbling in my own throat, but the agony of my Hell-injuries slammed into me as though I’d been mobbed by a gang wielding baseball bats. My shoulder, my gut, my leg, my chest. I folded at the waist and nearly tumbled to the floor, but caught myself on the edge of the chair.

When he raised his hand and gestured, an invisible force hit me with the subtlety and love of a speeding car. It threw me through the living room window with all the resistance of a rag doll, glass crashing around me, sharp edges nipping my skin.

The ground leaped up and hit me in the side of the head. In a cartoon world, I’d have seen stars, or perhaps small, singing birdies circling me. Instead, I experienced more pain.

I attempted to push myself up but my hand slipped and I went down again. My ears rang, my brain throbbed.

Fucker packs a wallop for a skinny teenager.

Lying on my back with shards of glass for a blanket and big, fluffy flakes of snow fluttering down on me, I blinked repeatedly, hoping the waving motion of my eyelashes might clear my head. At the same time, I prayed he didn’t jump me before I recovered my wits.

I climbed to my hands and knees, chunks of glass tinkling together as they fell from my chest, my head hung low between my shoulders, listening to a
Jurassic Park
T-Rex jogging around somewhere behind my forehead. When the dinosaur’s footsteps started to recede into the distance, I raised my head cautiously to keep if from popping off while I looked around.

The kid stood in the now-empty window, staring at me with a crazy-ass smile on his kisser. His t-shirt bulged around his arms and chest, his pant legs strained over his thighs making him resemble the comic book Hulk, but without the green hue.

Not such a skinny fucker now.

The thought didn’t return my misguided sense of pride to its former self.

I unfolded myself and clambered to my feet, the pain bursting from my shoulder, leg, and gut mercifully hiding the ones caused by flying through a window. I brushed the last of the broken glass off my front and shook the snow out of my hair, then leveled my best intimidating glare at him. Given I was leaning due to the pain in my leg, sagging because of the pain in my shoulder, and bleeding from multiple lacerations to the face, I doubted the effectiveness of my expression.

“
What’s going on here?”

I recognized the voice before I turned around.

Ashton.

The last time I saw him eye-to-eye, I planted a knife in his thigh, but I didn’t detect any hint of a limp in his stride as he came along the sidewalk. It bugged the shit out of me that his leg wound healed so much better than mine.

“Whoa, hold on,” I said holding my hands palm out in front of me. “It’s not what--”

“
I know you.” He stopped and pointed an accusatory finger at me. His entire face squinted. “Get out of here now or I’m calling the cops.”

Normally, I don’t dig the police getting involved, but this time it seemed like a good idea, so I didn’t protest as he reached into the inside pocket of his sport coat and pulled out his cell phone. Unfortunately, he distracted me from the danger lurking behind me until a pain lanced through my shoulder as though someone impaled it with a flagpole.

I lurched forward, gasping for air. The pains in my shoulder, chest and gut melded, filling my torso with unearthly torment that threatened to incapacitate me. An intense burning sensation ran through my arm, up my leg, casting a haze over my thoughts and vision, leaving me feeling like I’d gotten off a tilt-a-whirl stuck on overdrive. I bent at the waist, touched my fingers to the ground, and retched.

I’m not sure if the snow on my skin or the act of clearing a mediocre lunch from my stomach did it, but puking relieved my symptoms. With an effort, I straightened to face Ashton and decipher the complicated workings of my mouth.

“It’s not me,” I said, my voice a poor-tasting croak. “It’s him we need to worry about.”

I pointed at the house—specifically, the window I’d been thrown through—then turned to make sure I’d indicated the correct place. Right spot, but Cory no longer stood in the window.

“Shit.”

With a frustrated breath, I turned to Ashton again and found him gone, too.

Fucking magic tricks.

I took a couple of steps toward where my ex-wife’s fiancé had stood, part of my brain struggling to convince me his disappearance was a bad thing, part glad he was gone. Behind it all, the nagging worry over not locating Trevor yet gnashed at the back of my mind, a desperate, unfed canine with daggers for teeth.

Clearly, Ashton hadn’t run away, been kidnapped, or fell into a black hole, and I didn’t relish any of the other possibilities my mind concocted. After some time in Hell, you can go to some ugly places pretty quick. I pivoted on my good leg, facing my listing body back to the house, and found the answer.

Cory stood on the lawn glaring at me, with a dazed Ashton sitting at his feet. He didn’t appear hurt—yet—and I wished the same could have been said for me, but every movement needled with the pain of being poked with the business end of a javelin.

Black splotches littered the teen’s face, his chest heaved with each breath, and when his eyes fell upon me, the hurt in my chest, my gut, my shoulder and leg multiplied. Never in my life have I wished for someone to just blink, for God’s sake.

“
Ric,” Cory said, his voice a rumble. “Icarus. Harvester.”

He backed away, leaving Ashton sitting on the lawn like a first-grader awaiting story time. I watched Cory, waiting for him to make his play. He gestured at Ashton with a sweep of his arm, then leaped back into the house through the window my body had conveniently emptied of glass for him.

As he disappeared from my sight, the pain in my body diminished.

I bent over with my hands on my knees and seized the opportunity to fill my lungs and collect my thoughts. As the torment in my body relented to a level like I’d hit the ground after my parachute failed rather than as bad as it had been, the haze in my head lifted, allowing me to figure out what to do next.

Find Trevor.

My first step wobbled in the manner of a toddler finding his balance, but my second was stronger, more akin to a car crash victim learning how to walk again. By the time I took my fourth stride, my legs operated well enough it appeared as though I’d been doing this ‘walking’ thing for a few years.

I headed for the front door rather than clamoring through the broken living room window—I didn’t need more cuts, and doubted I’d be able to muster the strength to climb through. A strange thing occurred on the way to the door, though: my body took a hard left turn of its own accord and I found myself facing Ashton rather than the portal to finding my son.

“
What the hell?”

I tried to re-aim with no effect. When I gave it another shot, my feet refused to move, like the light dusting of snow covering the lawn beneath my shoes had become quick-dry super glue. I’d seen this before—one of Hell’s favorite tricks—so I knew more effort would achieve nothing. Better to wait it out.

Two problems with that thought: first, I needed to find Trevor and get him to safety; second, my feet began moving again with no input from me.

I stutter-stepped toward Ashton; one step, two steps, three. Five unintended paces brought me to standing directly in front of him sitting on the lawn, snow flakes clinging to his eyelashes and settling in his hair. His head tilted back to look at me, eyes unfocused. I opened my mouth to speak, but my jaw clamped shut before I spoke.

A panic-causing alarm bell went off in my head as I raised my hand without meaning to, folded my fingers and thumb into a fist, brought it down toward Ashton.

My knuckles caught him square on the cheek, snapping his head to the side and toppling him into the thin carpet of snow. I stared at him, my eyes feeling wide and googly, then glanced at my fist, wondering if it might attack me like the guy in
Evil Dead 2.
It didn’t. Instead, my foot lashed out and kicked Ashton in the stomach.

I tried to stop myself, I swear, but I couldn’t. Funny: after the number of times I’d imagined putting a beating on my ex-wife’s boyfriend, I never suspected I’d want to halt it when the time came.

The air oomphed out of Ashton’s lungs and he slumped onto his back, eyes rolling, redness spreading across his cheek where I’d struck him. I reached for him, thinking I’d help him up, but a second later found myself sitting on his chest with my fingers wrapped around his throat, squeezing.