On Unfaithful Wings (24 page)

The scrolls thumped against my chest, hammering me to go faster like a jockey’s crop on a horse’s ass--not the first time that name has been attached to me. Marty and Todd might not be the highest quality human beings, and maybe they didn’t think as much of me as I thought of them, but they were my friends, and they didn’t deserve to go to Hell.

I weaved my way through early-evening pedestrians, ignoring the ones who cursed my hurry. Too much to think about to worry about politeness. What could kill both Marty and Todd at the same time? Car accident? Piano falling out a window? One of their wives?

Whatever it was, I was determined to stop it.

I willed my legs faster, the soda in my belly sloshing and bubbling. A busy intersection forced me to stop and wait for traffic.

“Come on,” I spat tapping my foot.

Breath wheezed in and out of my lungs; death hadn’t done much to improve my stamina. The light changed and I took off again, pushing by the people awaiting the little white man’s appearance on the crossing signal. Only a couple of blocks left: lots of time.

What would happen if I saved them instead of harvesting their souls? Would the world stop spinning? The polar icecaps fall into the sea? Would Keanu Reeves learn how to act?

Crossing the last intersection onto the block listed on the scroll, I slowed and scanned for street numbers without any luck. I glanced at the parchment, at the neat, blocky printing listing the address. The number fit, it simply didn’t exist.

A grunt--a sound like someone punched in the gut--grabbed my attention, pulling my eyes to the opening of an alley. I tossed the scrolls aside and headed in. The dim street light filtering into the alley illuminated little more than shapes, silhouettes. I took a couple of cautious steps, aware I still had close to ten minutes before the expiration date of my old compatriots.

Someone moved. I squinted at the shape, the outline of a man crouching close to the ground. At first I thought it one of my friends bent over and vomiting like the good old days, but the sound wasn’t right; if I knew any noise intimately, it was drunken retching.

“Hey,” I yelled.

The figure straightened, then stood. Two shapes lay at his feet, a faint glow radiating from one. Todd’s spirit sat up from the body. I shook my head, confused, and glanced at my watch. Eight minutes. Either my watch or the scroll was wrong, but I’d been meticulous about ensuring my timepiece told the correct time. Gabe must have screwed up.

Is that possible?

“Icarus?” Todd’s essence said when it saw me. “Is that you? What’s happening?”

The dark figure lashed out, punching Todd in the face and the spirit tumbled to the ground like any flesh-and-blood man. I stopped short. This man shouldn’t know a spirit existed here, never mind be able to interact with it. What kind of man was this?

The simple answer: not a man.

He’s like me.

I crept toward their attacker, wishing for the shotgun left behind in Father Dominic’s room. It might not have worked on whoever or whatever awaited down the alley, but it would have felt good in my hands. The man stood his ground.

“Who are you?” I demanded, straining to keep my voice steady.

He didn’t answer. Adrenaline rushed through my body, making my head light, my limbs tingle. I only saw his outline, but it struck me he seemed to be wearing a dress. His arm dangled by his sides, hands clenched in fists; he held something in his left hand.

When the space between us closed to ten feet, Marty’s life ran out. His spirit emerged from his body, the glow of it enough to glint off the blade in their attacker’s hand. Sour tasting saliva filled my mouth.

“Icarus,” Marty yelled.

Now he recognizes me.

The man came at me knife first, leaving me no time to lament et death of my friends. I dodged right and slammed my elbow into the small of his back, the speed and skill with which I moved surprising both of us. For years I’d told people I was a lover, not a fighter, though, truthfully, I wasn’t very good at either.

He stumbled a step and I spun to follow up my first blow, but he stopped himself before losing balance and caught me across the side of the head, back-handed. His arms wrapped around me, bear-hugging mine to my sides. The weight of him pushed me backward. Worried his knife might find its way into one of my vital organs, I struggled to keep my feet under me. They might have stayed there, too, if not for the inconvenient placement of Todd’s body. I fell. The man rode me to the ground calling up a wicked case of deja-vu until my head hit the ground.

Everything went black.

***

My eyelids fluttered, half-expecting to open on a sleazy motel with Mikey seated beside me. Not this time. Only darkness and a dim luminescence barely strong enough to consider a light. I blinked hard, hoping to clear the unsettling double vision and the pain in my head. My ears came back on line first.

“Icarus?”

The voice came from a great distance.

“Icarus?”

A hand gripped my shoulder, shook me.

“Are you okay?”

I blinked again and the world settled into a single version of itself. Marty gaped down at me. Deep lines marred his cheeks and forehead, crow’s-feet stretched from the corners of his eyes to his ears.

How did he get so old?

Then I remembered this wasn’t Marty, but his soul.

“I’m all right.” I propped myself on my elbows. Todd stood behind Marty looking exactly the same as he did in life, if a little less opaque. I glanced up and down the alley. We were alone. “Where’d he go?”

“Took off after he knocked you out.”

I touched the back of my head, felt the goose egg forming; my hand came away bloody.

“What’s happening?” Todd asked.

“You’re dead.” I immediately regretted the callous sound of my tone.

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry. I thought I’d get here in time to save you, but something...something went wrong.”

A noise made the two spirits look away and a flashlight beam flickered down the alley. It fell on me, shining through Todd and Marty like they weren’t standing there because, well, they weren’t really.

“Police,” a voice called. “Stay where you are. Don’t move.”

At first I thought it might be the murderer coming back, having left to fetch a light to see as he properly finished the job, so the thought of cops brought a brief sense of relief. Then reality set in--a supposedly dead guy sprawled across two corpses in a dark alley, no good reason to be here, and no one else around. Nope, no reason for suspicion here. All the muscles in my body tensed coaxing a lance of pain from the bump on the back of my head.

“Put your hands where I can see them.”

I started to do what the cop said but stopped before completing the task. As my right hand came up into my peripheral vision, I glimpsed what it unknowingly held: the killer’s knife. How convenient he’d left it with me. This didn’t bode well given what kind of shape Marty and Todd were in. Two witnesses to what really happened stood a few feet away, invisible and inaudible to the cops. Perhaps putting my hands in the air and not moving wasn’t the best option.

“Get out of here, guys,” I told Todd and Marty, keeping my voice low. “Go to the toy store on Pullman. Someone will be waiting for you.”

“But, Ric--”

“Go.” I waved my hand at them like clearing a bad smell.

“I said don’t move,” the cop shouted.

Marty snagged Todd by the ethereal sleeve and led him away, both of them glancing back at me, or maybe at their bodies lying in coagulating pools of their blood. Yeah, probably not me. The cop’s light shone across Todd’s earthly face, illuminating the inverted cross carved into his forehead.

“Shit.”

It occurred to me this might not be the best place to be. I dropped the knife and started crabbing away from the mess I’d gotten myself into.

“Halt,” the cop shouted with equal parts command and nerves.

The flashlight blinded me. Everything I knew about police procedure, I’d learned watching ‘Law & Order’, so my information might not be accurate, but I assumed his weapon would be trained on me. Hell, if I headed into a dark alley where bad shit was going down, I’d probably have already shot me.

The time for sneaking was past, the time for cut and run had come.

I jumped up and bolted down the alley, black trench coat flapping. The cop yelled again, probably another warning about not moving, but I didn’t slow. A thunder clap echoed down the alley and shards of brick exploded off the wall to my left, showering across my shoulders.

I ducked away from the shrapnel and pressed on, suddenly wondering if death was an option although I’d already been there, done that.
How mortal am I?
The goose egg on the back of my head throbbed in response.

I leapt a pile of torn garbage bags, their contents strewn across my path, then skidded to a halt as the end of the alley loomed before me. In movie chases, the alley ends with a fence--tall but climbable--and the pursuee scrambles over into a busy China town. Failing that, a conveniently accessible fire escape to scale and escape by rooftop.

No such luck.

Instead, a windowless brick wall stood at the end of the alley, bounded by its identical twin brothers on either side. Overhead, at least ten feet off the ground, the bottom rung of a fire escape hung tauntingly, placed high enough to keep people from climbing up and taking to the roofs. With my vertical, it may as well have been a hundred feet up. I discovered a detail they leave out in the movies: the place reeked of garbage and excrement, enough to make me fight back my dinner. My energy drained out through the bottom of my feet and I felt like a guy who’d just woken from being knocked unconscious.

“Don’t move, or I’ll shoot.”

Back to the cops, I raised my hands. What happens next in cop shows? He slams me against the wall, anxious to punish me for the horrible crime I’ve committed before slapping the cuffs on me hard enough to leave bruises on my wrists for a week. Cue the music, cut to commercial.

“Turn around slowly. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

I did what he said. The cop directed his light into my eyes, the beam tremoring in his hand. Couldn’t say I blamed him--he thought he’d caught a serial killer. Scary proposition, but a potential career maker. I decided to play it cool.

“What happens now?”

“On your knees. Hands on your head.”

I’d forgotten about that cop move. I shuffled foot to foot, felt a squishiness beneath the sole of my shoe. My nostrils flared.

“Aw, come on--”

“Get down!”

His tone suggested that, if I didn’t do what he said, we’d soon find out exactly how mortal I was. Wetness soaked the knees of my jeans as I knelt and laced my fingers over the goose egg on the back of my head. A second cop cut across the flashlight beam, giving me a wide berth to come up from behind. He put a foot into my back, pushed me forward. I kept my face from slamming into the garbage-covered pavement then the cop straddled me, grabbing my arms. The cold metal cuffs slapped against my wrist, sending a jolt of pain up my arm. I grunted, cheek rested on the ground, breath held to keep the stench from gagging me. The cops yelled obscenities at me, feeling tough now they’d neutralized me. They spoke to each other and into mikes pinned to their shoulders. I ignored them. Eventually, they dragged me to my feet and led me out of the alley. As I passed the mutilated bodies, I wondered why this had happened, how the scroll could be wrong. And if Marty and Todd found their way to the toy store.

For their sake, I hoped so.

Chapter Eighteen

A few years had passed since I last occupied a cell and the budget for redecorating looked to have been non-existent since my last visit: sink, toilet, gray concrete floor, green paint flaking off the walls, metal cot with mattress squeaky enough everyone knew when you masturbated. Jail’s the last place demanding originality or creativity. They could at least spring for a different brand of cot.

The man stood staring at me, one hand grasping an unpainted metal bar of my cage. He didn’t match the uniformed cops who brought me in, so he must be higher up the police food chain. His obviously cheap suit, probably the only one he owned, looked like it had been purchased a long while ago at a discount place specializing in last year’s styles. If he’d pressed his half-untucked shirt before arriving at work that morning, no hint of the effort remained; his tie was pulled down from his open top button, relieving the irritated, razor-burned skin at his throat. He didn’t say anything for a while, just watched me with a disquieting look. I expected interrogation, accusation, intimidation, but not this. Would he be good cop or bad? I squirmed under his gaze, considered asking what the hell he was looking at, but he likely wanted such a reaction, so I stared back, doing my best not to fidget. After five minutes of a staring contest with many blinks but no winner, he finally broke the silence.

“Who are you?” His tone harbored no malice, merely sounded like a man whose shift finished many hours ago with still no hope of the end in sight. The dark circles under his eyes suggested my assessment might be in the vicinity of the truth. “Why don’t you tell me so I can go home.”