by Bruce Blake
The pain of my bruised ass reminded me about the handcuffs I’d liberated when Poe rescued me from jail. I pulled them out of my back pocket and bounced them on my palm. Even in the scalding room, the metal felt cool, the weight of them reassuring. I crouched like a basketball player ready to defend, waiting for an opening. Father Dominic swung at me a few more times, then reached for his pinned hand again. I darted in.
I grabbed his wrist and wrenched it away, slamming the cuffs on. His teeth gnashed dangerously close to my ear, the pointed canines clicking together less than an inch from my lobe. He fought against my grip, tried to keep me from pulling his arm away like we were engaged in a whole-body arm wrestle.
Flames spread from his burning hands, climbing the sleeves of my coat, reaching for my face like an attack dog doing his bidding. The smell of smoldering flesh--disgusting and exciting--urged me on. This time the stench didn’t come from some dead guy but from my own burning flesh.
The priest was strong, but I had weight and leverage on my side. I stretched his arm back and slipped the other end of the cuffs around a pipe running from a radiator, locking it down. His head jerked toward me, to bite or head-butt me, but I dodged and stepped away.
He thrashed against the wall, screaming profanities, but the stake and cuffs held while I calmly patted out the flames before they found their way to my cheeks. Pain rolled in waves along my arms, throbbing with the beat of my pulse, but I kept the agony from my expression, kept it from him.
Instead, watching him pinned to the wall in the same pose he’d made me stand in punishment all those times, I smiled.
“Let me go.” Flaming spittle flew from his lips as he screamed; I stepped back to avoid being set ablaze again.
“Come now. Don’t be cross.”
A sound behind me drew my attention, but I kept my eyes on the struggling priest.
“Ric?”
Trevor’s voice. A cold knot of fear clogged my throat.
“Hang on Trev,” I said over my shoulder. “I’ll be right there.”
With the last word, I rushed Father Dominic, grabbed the sides of his head and tilted his face toward mine. I had to get to Trevor, but I couldn’t trust a heating pipe and piece of broken pew would hold this monster. I had to end it. Now.
The flames surrounding him scorched my hands but I held on. A little burnt flesh was small price to pay for my son’s soul. The priest closed his eyes, unwilling to look into mine, so I jammed my thumbs into them. He gnashed his teeth, fighting hard, but I pried his eyelids open. Our gazes met, leaving him unable to look away.
Finally, after all these years, he was mine. Vengeance was mine.
His face slackened with naked fear as the light pressure on my face returned followed by the surge of energy through my veins. Seconds later, the mist bled from his face again--his soul, essence, spirit: whatever--and this time I was ready for it. It floated near my nostrils and I inhaled deeply, pulling it out faster. It filled my head first, making it feel light and swollen, a glass ball floating on the ocean. Pictures trampled my thoughts, memories not belonging to me.
Father Dominic’s biography played out across my mind. First a child, spurned and abused by his peers--name-calling, unprovoked beatings, being bullied in a familiar-looking playground. Next, a teen rushed through youth to replace an absentee father as money-earner and more, comforting his grieving mother, sleeping in her bed in a way a son was never meant to. Then a young man devoted to his studies in divinity school, avoiding contact with others, especially his family. I felt like a voyeur, excited and appalled, and tried not to pay attention, but as my breath drew him farther into me, I couldn’t help but see.
The young man fell in love with a woman who treated him with respect and sympathy, and I felt a moment of happiness cross the void between us--the only one I’d sensed. But it was short-lived as the woman, the love of his life, realized she wanted something different and left him for another woman. Rage swirled through my head, whipping the other memories into a frenzy like leaves in an autumn storm. Desperate, he went to win her back and found them together naked, embracing, and I recognized them as the women I’d seen in Hell.
And then I saw Father Dominic kill them.
I gasped, nearly breaking eye contact with the priest. The things I’d seen, they were Father Dominic’s Hell, not random events designed to freak me out. Guilt and understanding nearly convinced me to let him go, but I made myself hold his gaze. Knowing the why of things didn’t change what he’d done, to me and to my friends. And to Trevor.
His memories kept coming. I glimpsed years of flight and self-torture; a monastery in a distant country, self-flagellation, guilt, pleas to God for forgiveness. Eventually, he returned to this country, to this church, hiding in his everyday duties, seeking solace in his flock and finding it until another woman came into his life, a beautiful woman with raven hair and an angelic smile. A nun.
“Mother?”
I saw him watch her from afar and think of her while he did un-priestly things alone in bed. He offered comfort when her father died, risking his vows to be close to her, but she wanted none of it, she found her comfort elsewhere. In God, she said, with the angels. And I knew which one.
“Icarus.”
The word echoed through the church. I fought not to look over my shoulder at the source.
“The priest’s soul belongs to me. Let him be.”
“Too many have died.” The words--compressed through my clenched teeth--broke the link with the priest. The mist ceased flowing, but what had crossed the space between us stayed with me, swelling my sinuses until my face felt like it would explode. “Why did you let him kill them?”
“Mmm, do not make uninformed accusations. I used him as a tool, a means to an end.” His conversational, at odds with the situation, set my teeth on edge. “But if you don’t let him go, two more will die.”
I let the priest’s chin droop to his chest and faced the angel of death. He stood among the wreckage created by Father Dominic with Poe still clasped in one arm and Trevor squirming in the other.
“All I asked of the good father was to bring you to me. He chose his own method.”
“Let them go.”
“A soul for a soul.” He bent his head toward Trevor, their eyes meeting, and a thin line of vapor flowed from my boy into the angel.
“No.” I jumped forward a step and he ceased inhaling my son’s life.
“We have an agreement then?”
I nodded unenthusiastically.
“Then put back what you have taken.”
Resigned, I slouched back to Father Dominic sagging against the wall. The flames had spread, flickering across more than half the church. Above the crackle and pop of the fire, I thought I heard sirens.
About bloody time.
Maybe if I stretched this out, it would give the cops time to--
“Hurry,” Azrael urged, making me hate their ability to read thoughts.
I put my finger under the priest’s chin and raised his face; this time I didn’t have to gouge them to get him to look at me. He knew what was coming. I stared into his dead eyes, finally understanding some of what made him the man who’d done those things to me in my youth. I still wouldn’t forgive him. If not for the angel of death holding my son hostage, I’d have let him rot.
If I’d harvested his soul like I was supposed to, none of this would have happened.
A shiver ran down my spine at the thought, closely followed by another that I didn’t have time to realize the full implications of: Why would they send me to harvest the priest’s soul?
“Go ahead,” Azrael prompted in a tone that probably wouldn’t have sounded any different were he encouraging me to try a new food or skydive for the first time.
I held my breath a second longer, defiant, then released it, giving up Father Dominic’s soul for Trevor and Poe. The mist snaked across the space between us, unerringly finding the priest’s nostrils, and his body stiffened. The pressure in my sinu
ses lessened as the scenes of his life rushed through my mind again; if I wasn’t already using my lungs to expel his soul from my body, I’d have breathed a sigh of relief over their leaving. I already possessed a full complement of bad memories, I didn’t need the priest’s, too.
With the last of Father Dominic gone out of me, I faced the angel of death, the being who’d ruined lives by fathering me. His beatific smile made me want to love him or perhaps rearrange his features like a living Mr. Potatohead. The first option held no appeal, and I didn’t possess the physical strength or skill to choose the second, so I opted for hating him for the things he’d done.
“Let them go.”
He laughed and squeezed Poe and Trevor tighter to him.
“Not ‘them.’ I told you: a soul for a soul. You’ve only given me one, so you only get one in return.”
Without expending any effort, he slid Poe’s limp body along the floor toward me. She skidded thirty feet before petering to a halt a yard from a burning heap of scrap pew. I rushed to her side and pulled her to a safer spot, something proving more and more difficult to find in the burning church.
“Give me the boy.”
“Tut, tut, Icarus; a deal is a deal. A soul for a soul. You gave me the priest’s, I gave you the guardian’s. If you want your son, I need another soul in trade.” He paused, breathed deep; the flicker in his eyes wasn’t a reflection of the fire in the church. “Do you have any left?”
Cocky bastard.
We both knew I owned only one more soul to trade. From somewhere behind me, a pounding struggled to be heard above the fire’s roar: someone trying to kick in the front door.
“They can do nothing to help you.” A note of insistence finally leaked into the angel’s tone. “Decide. Who comes with me: you or the boy?”
I glanced at Poe lying prone on the floor. No help from her. And fire and charred wood wouldn’t make effective weapons for fighting an archangel.
“Me. Take me.”
He nodded, his smile like a child told he can eat all the Halloween candy he wants. I picked my way through the inferno to within a few yards and he let Trevor go, tossing him aside like a sack of garbage the way he’d done with Poe. He hit the floor hard, skidding through the debris. Azrael gestured and flames flared up in a circle around Trevor, trapping him.
“No.” I moved toward my son, but the intense shock of Azrael’s touch stopped me. I whirled, knocking his hand off my arm. “You bastard. You said you’d let him go.”
“I didn’t say he would survive, merely that I’d let his soul go.”
I rushed toward Trevor, but the angel of death caught the back of my shirt and pulled me away toward the back of the church. I struggled, but he was too strong, stronger by far than the priest. He spun me, grabbing my shoulder to guide me, the sensation of his hand on me numbing it.
“Why are you doing this? You were an angel.”
The look in his eyes softened for a second, allowing emotion to seep in.
“There is much you do not know, Icarus Fell, much you do not understand about me. But one thing you should understand: a son should be with his father.”
“Then let me be with Trevor.”
He hesitated as though debating with himself.
“He is not your son.”
Familiar pain and regret gripped my gut, shortening my breath. I strained to look back over my shoulder, mind racing. I didn’t care what he or anyone else said; Trevor was my son and I had to save him. But how? I came up with nothing: no weapons, no ideas, no chance.
Except one.
I twisted myself around, facing the fallen angel as he towered over me. Our eyes met; the pillow fell across my face, the surge filled my chest. Azrael’s face froze as the peculiar mist trailed from his eyes, crossing the gap toward me. I was shocked I could do this to him but didn’t stop to consider it as I inhaled deeply. The mist possessed no smell, no taste, like water vapor on a cool day.
Visions sprang to mind: beautiful, indescribable things at first that filled me with wonder and awe. Then a woman, the same woman I’d seen in Father Dominic’s soul: my mother--crying, distraught. Azrael at her side, hand on her shoulder, then on her cheek, then on her breast.
“No.”
The angel of death standing before me smiled and laughed, a sound like the melodic peal of an ancient bell reverberating in my head.
He’s letting me do this. He’s letting me see.
Alarmed, I tried to avert my gaze, but he wouldn’t allow it. The visions kept coming.
Time skittered forward to the woman lying on a bed, squeezing me from her womb. Azrael stood beside her, waiting, Michael poised behind him. The moment my feet slid free, my mother’s essence slipped out of her like afterbirth. The archangel’s jostled for position, but Azrael blocked Michael and caught my mother’s last breath as her soul was plucked away. Michael faded away with a curse; Azrael reached out his hand, invisible to Sister Mary-Therese as she wailed for help, and laid his fingers on the head of the babe. My head.
Time seemed to stop. His hand rested on my forehead for a full minute, like a man undecided what to do, or perhaps saying good-bye. Then they disappeared. Another glimpse, this time of Michael banishing Azrael from Heaven, a satisfied grin on Mikey’s face as laughter followed the sensation of a plunging descent.
The flow of mist between us stopped. The visions disappeared.
“You let me live.”
A coldness gripped me, shivering my limbs and bringing goosebumps to my arms despite the fire raging around us. With the shudder came realization: I’d played the angel of death at his own game, a game I was bound to lose.
Azrael’s gaze intensified and a sensation like needles piercing my eyes pinned my lids open and my gaze on his. The mist appeared between us again, this time emanating from me. My body went rigid, breath caught in my throat. The memories blurring my sight belonged to me, rushing past, warping my emotions into a sheet of pulled taffy. I concentrated on Trevor lying on the floor surrounded by flames, used him to anchor me in the world. I wanted to look away, to run, but my limbs felt like sacks filled with wet cement.
“That’s enough, Azrael.”
The voice made Azrael look away, breaking the connection. I sagged, barely holding my sapped body upright, but managed to follow the angel’s gaze to see who’d spoken.
The man standing at the altar wore a red leather chest piece and leggings, a red helmet with gold wings on the side, and held a sword of liquid gold bigger than a man in his right hand. The muscles in his arms bunched and bulged, a stern look of reprimand set his jaw.
Michael.
“What are you doing here?” Azrael growled.
“I should ask you the same thing.” Michael’s eyes blazed. “Haven’t you messed in his life enough?”
“Haven’t you? I’m here to collect what’s mine.”
“Twice before I’ve kept him from you. Did you really think I’d let you have him this time?”
“You give yourself too much credit. Once I let the babe live; the other time you deceived me. You’ve done nothing but ruin his life.”
My eyes bounced back and forth between them as they spoke, like watching a televised tennis match, but I couldn’t follow their meaning. My head spun and pounded with desperation as I tried, as I thought of the flames trapping my son.
“You have the priest. Let Icarus go. You have no claim on him.”
“On the contrary, it is you who has no claim.” Azrael grabbed my arm, his fingers grinding muscle against bone. “He’s my son.”
“Not any more. He is with us.”
“Try and take him then, brother.”
The smoky air in the church grew heavy with electric energy, like all the emotion they held for one another--love, hate, jealousy, admiration--flowed into the atmosphere, settled into the space between. I gritted my teeth, the pressure bringing pain to my head.
I didn’t see Mike move, but the next thing I knew, my ass hit the floor beside two archa
ngels wrestling over my soul. I pumped my legs, pushing away from the melee; if one of their blows went astray, I wouldn’t be around to tell my grandchildren about this. I turned my back on them, crawled for Trevor before Azrael realized my departure. I rolled through the flames to my son’s side.
The circle of fire around Trevor flared, trapping us. I scooped him in my arms, held his head against my chest and fought the urge to stroke his hair. I sighed deeply with the relief of holding him, hot air burning my lungs.
“I’m sorry, Trev.”
I struggled to my feet with him in my arms.
God, when did he get so big?
After everything I’d been through to get here, four-foot-high flames wouldn’t hold me back. I closed my eyes and rushed through, protecting Trevor’s face between my cheek and shoulder. On the other side, I checked to be sure flames hadn’t spread to him, then headed for the door. A hand on my elbow startled me and I whirled around, expecting to defend myself and my son, almost dropping him in the process.
“Poe.”
A line of blood ran from one nostril, a bruise had already begun to form on her cheek below her left eye, but she still managed a pained smile sagging on one end.
“Let me help.”
She held her arms out to take him. I looked at her, dubious. She was smaller than me and didn’t look in any shape to walk on her own, never mind with a teenage boy in her arms. Who was she kidding?
“I got him.”
“Icarus.” The tone of command in her voice surprised me. “Give him to me.”
I did. Trevor’s head fell back as I passed him into Poe’s arms. My stomach knotted in alarm. I touched his throat, felt his pulse. Unconscious. We started for the front door, but stopped at the sound of hard thumping against it.
“Cops.”
I cast a glance around the burning room and saw the windows were still intact. They weren’t so desperate to get in as to be willing to break the centuries-old stained glass. Not yet.