All Who Wander Are Lost (An Icarus Fell Novel) Read Online Free Page A

coursed through me like I’d been
struck by lightning. My body stiffened, eyeballs rolled back in
their sockets. My eyes closed and I felt as though we were moving.
    When I pried my
eyelids open, the patio furniture warehouse was gone and I had to
squint against the daylight. We stood on a busy street corner, a
place downtown I’d have recognized if the archangel’s
mode of transportation hadn’t left my head spinning.
    “ Where...where
are we?” I ventured through dried lips.
    He raised his
finger and pointed. Across the street, obscured by traffic flowing
past, a woman with long, chestnut hair stood holding hands with a
five-year-old boy. She watched the cars zipping by, waiting for a
break so they could cross; the boy held a small toy, something tiny
enough for him to conceal in his left hand.
    Should I know
these people?
    I didn’t
think so. Why would he bring me here?
    “ Why
are we here?”
    The words were
barely clear of my lips when the boy dropped his toy—a red
dinky car, it turned out. It tumbled from his hand, bounced once on
the edge of the curb, pirouetted in the air, and came to rest in the
street. The boy released his mother’s hand and bent to
retrieve it but over-balanced. The woman shrieked as her son fell in
front of traffic. She leaped from the curb and caught the boy under
his arms, threw him clear of the on-coming car which struck her
before the driver had time to remember his car had brakes. The
impact catapulted her ten yards, flying over the boy, until her head
impacted a light post and flipped her body three hundred-and-sixty
degrees like a rag doll caught in a wind storm.
    My mouth fell open.
    Pedestrians jumped
away from the woman’s body, one man narrowly avoiding contact
with her ruined head. The boy lay on the sidewalk wailing, his arm
scraped when his mother threw him to safety, no idea she’d
given her life to save him. As her body came to a stop in a jumbled
heap, her soul separated from it and a man in a black trench coat
and hat pulled down over his eyes stepped out of the crowd. He
ignored the child and the woman’s corpse, instead making his
way toward the woman’s soul where she stood halfway between
the boy and her body, looking from one to the other, unsure what to
do.
    I recognized the
man immediately.
    “ Carrion,”
I blurted and went to step off the curb.
    I didn’t
think I’d get there before him to rescue her from a trip to
Hell, but I’d give it my best try. Or would have if Michael’s
hand on my arm didn’t stop me. The shock of his touch
stiffened my body again and the world went blank.
    Upon the return of
my senses, I found the sun still shining, but the harsh smell of car
exhaust had been replaced by the bite of brine in the air. I turned
to ask Mikey what-the-Hell happened, but the words never formed.
Water stretched around us in every direction—water, water
everywhere as Samuel Taylor Coleridge said in his poem, or Bruce
Dickinson from Iron Maiden quoted in their Mariner-inspired song. I
glanced at my feet and was shocked to find water beneath us, too.
    “ How...?”
    No point finishing
the question—what do silly things like the laws of nature mean
to an archangel? I might not know an angel’s full capabilities
but by now you’d think I’d at least expect the
unexpected. No quick learner, me; another of my shortfalls.
    I searched the
horizon and saw nothing: no boats, no land, no wayward surfers or
swimmers; nary a threatening shark fin cut through the water.
    Maybe he brought
me here for the view.
    “ There.”
    I’d have
referred to the craft plummeting toward the ocean as a Cessna, but I
don’t know much about planes. A plume of black smoke trailed
behind the single engine, concealing the cockpit and leaving a
widening smudge across the sky like squid ink in water. As it
plunged seaward, I imagined how the pilot must feel watching death
approach, knowing he couldn’t prevent it. Sort of how I’d
felt with a gorilla-sized mugger on my