On Unfaithful Wings

by Bruce Blake

  The sound of his voice broke the spell that this was anyone other than Father Dominic, the man who branded me, named me after a boy who failed so spectacularly he’d earned a place immortalized in mythology. For decades, I’d hated him, and the old hatred woke along with him.

  “Father Dominic.” My words like dry ice.

  “I thought you dead.”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear.”

  “Is this my life passing before my eyes, then?”

  “Not exactly.”

  His lips twitched. He’d never been good at smiling.

  “You’re the last person I expected to see on my death bed.”

  “Why?” I demanded, ignoring his words. “Why did you treat me the way you did?”

  “Your soul’s tainted.” He coughed, phlegm spattering his chin. “Was from the start.”

  “What are you talking about? I was only a child.”

  “Child of a beast.”

  “But I--”

  “Your mother was a saint. He ruined her, damned her soul. You’re the embodiment of it.”

  Poe stirred behind me, discomforted. I closed my eyes. My mother had been a nun at this church, worked and prayed alongside Father Dominic. She died birthing me--a happening the priest declared my fault--but no one ever told me who my father was. The old hatred burned brighter.

  “Who was he? Who was my father?”

  His eyes clouded and he coughed again.

  “I loved her,” he said, his voice barely more than a breath. “In my own way.”

  “Tell me who my father was.”

  His mouth twitched once more and a last breath sighed between his peeling lips, exhaling the last of his life from his lungs. I didn’t rejoice as I thought I might; even our worst enemies have a hand in molding us.

  A second later, a younger, healthier-looking version of Father Dominic with a cruel twist to his lip sat up on the bed and looked around. His eyes fell on me, and I stared back, unwavering.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  Surprise widened the spirit’s eyes, but the look dissipated quickly.

  “You can see me.” A statement, not a question. “Mary said you were back. So you’re the one come to get me, then? I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were dead, but they brought you back, didn’t they?” The corner of his mouth crinkled in a sneer. “They should have sent you to Hell.”

  I pulled the shotgun out of the trench coat pocket and leveled the sawed off barrel at him, though I’m not sure why--the man was already dead, a spirit. What was I going to do, ruin his wallpaper?

  “They didn’t. Tell me about my life.”

  “You got what you deserved. Your poor sweet mother’s death spared her years of humiliation and embarrassment.”

  I heard Poe move behind me, felt her electric touch on my shoulder.

  “Icarus,” she whispered. I shrugged her hand away.

  I glared at the priest, unable to dredge up words hateful enough to express my feelings. Thoughts buzzed through my head on the heels of the vodka’s nearly-worn-off effects, one horrible notion rising above the others.

  “Are you my father?” I asked through a jaw clenched so tight a crowbar would have snapped in its grip. “Is that why you hate me? Because my mother died and you blame me?”

  He looked like I’d slapped him--not a bad idea.

  “It’s your fault she died, but I would never defile myself or your mother to be the sire of someone like you.”

  “Who then?”

  “Icarus, let the poor soul be.”

  The man’s voice came from the doorway. I whirled around, grazing Poe with the stubby shotgun barrel as I actually remembered to point it. It took an instant to recognize him: dark clothes, dark coat, black hair past his shoulders, olive skin. A knot of fear in my throat strangled my breath.

  “Azrael,” Father Dominic growled behind me. The word made the short hairs on my neck stand straight. Poe backed away, terror distorting her face. An instant of concern for her was overcome by the angel-of-death’s presence.

  “What do you want?” I managed.

  “Oh, I think you know.” His slow, deliberate words and melodic tone mesmerized. He stepped into the room, boots thudding dully on the hardwood floor. “I want the same thing you do.”

  I backed away, shielding Poe with my body. Once, he’d been an angel. I didn’t think a shotgun would have much effect on one of God’s children, but I kept it on him anyway.

  “You’re right, it wouldn’t harm me. The noise would wake others, bring the police.” He smiled; not the evil smile I expected, but beautiful like every other angel’s, maybe more so. “You don’t want to go back to jail, Icarus.”

  “Don’t listen to him, I’m a man of God. Take me to Heaven, Icarus. The angel said you would.”

  I looked sideways at the priest. The angel of death laughed.

  “Do you think a collar around your neck absolves you, Dominic? I was the hand of God, one of his chosen, and look where I am.”

  “I know all about you and what you did. You got what you deserved.”

  “As will you.”

  My sweaty palm made the stock of the gun slick in my hand, but I didn’t put it down despite how useless it might be. I glanced from Azrael to Poe, then to Father Dominic. The priest’s gaze locked on mine, fear flashing plainly through his eyes. A rill of guilty satisfaction seeped into my mind. How many times did he bring the same look to my face?

  “Don’t let him take me,” he pleaded. I backed away from the angel of death, guiding Poe along, putting the bed with Father Dominic’s body and soul between us.

  Azrael stopped and spread his arms. “By all means, harvester. Complete your duty. I won’t stand in your way. Or, you can take the opportunity to make him pay for what he did.”

  Breath hissed through my teeth. I thought about Mike and Gabe and Poe. I thought about beatings, threats and punishments. What would the priest’s Hell look like? Would it resemble the bible, or something worse? The shotgun wavered in my hand, but I held my ground, committing to nothing.

  “Don’t be a fool. He’ll take me to Hell.”

  I sucked on my teeth, contemplating.

  “I...Icarus,” Poe stammered tugging on the back of my coat.

  “Icarus, if you do this, if you take me with you, your sins will be forgiven.”

  “He is a priest, Icarus. Maybe he can plead your case.” Azrael waved his hand and the closet door opened, startling me as it slammed against the wall.

  Inside, a boy cowered, cheeks streaked with dried tears, shoulders shaking with tremors of fear. The smell of urine and moth balls wafted across the room. My throat clenched at the sight of the young me huddled in the corner of the closet wishing the demons wold just take me and end my suffering.

  I needed to harvest the priest’s soul to bring me closer to my life, but how could I forgive?

  “I’m not the only sinner in the room. You’re the one who deserves to be punished.” I set the shotgun on the bedside table and stepped away.

  “What are you doing?” Poe asked, grabbing my shoulder, her voice a squeak. I ignored her.

  “No,” the priest whispered. I ignored him, too. Father Dominic’s spectral face went ashen. He looked at Azrael as the fallen angel advanced. The priest scrambled away, cowering against the headboard. “No. Don’t let him.”

  The towering angel of death grew larger. Darkness gathered forming black wings spread out behind him, wrapping around the priest, drawing him in. Azrael held the priest’s spirit tight against him. The bottom half of Father Dominic’s soul melded with Azrael’s body, making them look like Siamese twins joined at the waist.

  “Please help me Icarus. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Poe’s grip on my shoulder tightened to the point of pain.

  “Stop him, Icarus.”

  I didn’t move, didn’t speak. The sight made me want to run, leave it all behind, but I couldn�
��t. Part of me wanted to watch the bastard get dragged off to Hell, but another part fought to reach out, to save him, to bring me one soul closer to restarting my life. The soul slid more deeply into the deposed angel’s chest until only a disenfranchised head remained visible. Father Dominic’s expression changed, terror hardening to hatred, his eyes burning.

  “You’ll pay for this, Icarus Fell. Your greatest fall is yet to come.”

  Mythology jokes at a time like this. I flipped him the bird as his face vanished into Azrael’s chest, disappearing forever. Relief and dread mixed liberally through my body. I avoided Poe’s eyes, knowing the disappointment I’d see on her face, and looked across the bed at the angel of death, staring at him over Father Dominic’s corpse.

  “What now?”

  The smile crawled back across Azrael’s face. “Were I you,” he said in his slow drawl with no twang to it, “I’d run.”

  He held out his left arm and the shotgun leapt from the bedside table into his black-gloved hand. Before I drew breath, the explosion of hammer contacting shell set my ears ringing and spattered Father Dominic’s face across his pillow and onto the headboard.

  I gaped.

  Azrael dropped the shotgun and kicked it leisurely under the bed.

  “Good luck, Icarus. We’ll meet again soon. Tell Michael I said ‘hello’.”

  His form faded and disappeared, leaving the smell of cinnamon and gunpowder in its wake. I stared, his outline burned into my retinas by the flash of the shotgun blast. For an instant, I wondered what the cops would think about finding a dead man’s fingerprints on the gun and thought about diving under the bed to retrieve it, but alarms were already raised in other rooms, bare feet already thumping on wooden hallway floor. Poe yanked my arm.

  “We have to get out of here.”

  I ran for the window and crashed through like an inept stunt man. My feet hit the lawn first, then I rolled with the impact. Pain shot up my legs and chunks of glass and window pane slammed against my hands and face. I gained my feet, stumbled once, and then lurched across the churchyard toward the cemetery. Ahead of me, Poe stood at the edge of the bone yard, waving for me to follow. A shout pursued me from the shattered window, but I didn’t look back, afraid it might be the devil himself calling after me.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sister Mary-Therese woke without knowing why, hazy sleep blurring her vision as she regarded the bedside clock. It cleared enough to make out the numbers: two fifty-eight a.m. The door buzzer sounded, giving reason why she’d woken. She threw her covers back and sat up gingerly, cringing at the pain in her back brought on by autumn’s chill. She settled her feet into slippers and grabbed the robe hung on the bed post, pulling it over her shoulders as she stood. Her first few steps were labored as the aches of disuse worked themselves out of her knees and feet.

  The buzzer again.

  Who could it be at this time?

  She paused before opening the door out of her modest apartment, remembering stories in the paper about home invasions: little old ladies beaten and left for dead over a couple of hundred dollars or a digital camera and a DVD player--none of which she possessed. Her hesitation didn’t last--if God willed it, then so be it.

  She struggled down the stairs, the tight muscles in her legs loosening with each step. As she reached the short hall leading to the entrance, she saw a figure through the wire-mesh reinforced glass set in the door. Though the man had his back to her as he glanced up and down the street, she recognized him immediately.

  “Icarus?”

  He spun toward her and Sister Mary-Therese felt her cheeks blanch; nausea knotted her stomach. Cuts and scrapes covered his face, each leaking a trail of blood down his forehead, cheeks, chin, transforming his face into a frightening Halloween mask. She fumbled with the lock and pulled the door open. He spilled through the doorway, allowing her to catch him before he hit the floor.

  “Sister,” he whispered.

  “This way, child.”

  With an arm around his shoulders, Sister Mary-Therese guided him up the stairs and along the hall to the scarred wooden door of her apartment. She struggled with his weight but the adrenaline racing through her allowed her to get him through the door and across the room where she lowered him onto the couch she’d purchased at the Salvation Army years ago. Her slippered feet whispered through the ancient shag carpet as she went, aches and pains forgotten, to the kitchen to fetch the First-Aid kit. Icarus groaned on the couch behind her. She couldn’t remember the last time a man came into her apartment and found herself thankful she’d purchased flowers on the way home today, their fragrance masking the embarrassing odor of Ben Gay insinuating itself into her residence over the last few years.

  Sister Mary-Therese emerged from the kitchen carrying a small white box, its lid emblazoned with a red cross, and a brown plastic bottle. Kneeling on the thread-bare carpet beside Icarus, her knuckles protested as she worked the box’s clasp open, removed some cotton swabs and spun the cap off the bottle of iodine. She tilted the bottle, soaking one of the cotton balls.

  “What happened?”

  She pressed the cotton ball to a cut on his face, provoking a sharp breath. He flinched and she pulled the swab away, easing his pain, but she’d done this enough times to know if she didn’t clean the cuts now, it would be worse later. She took a pair of tweezers from the first aid box, plucked a sliver of glass from his forehead and held the shard in front of his eyes so he’d understand she knew something was drastically wrong.

  “Tell me.”

  “Father Dominic’s dead,” he deadpanned.

  His words didn’t surprise her. She knew it was coming, but grief still flared in her chest, making breathing difficult for a moment. As she struggled to retain her composure, the full meaning of his words impressed itself on her, and she stopped her ministrations.

  “And they sent you to collect his soul?”

  He nodded, then grimaced with the pain the movement sent down his neck.

  “What happened, Icarus? Did you do what they sent you to do?”

  He closed his eyes and she used the opportunity to search his face. None of the lacerations looked deep, but she saw glass in a few of them.

  How did this happen retrieving a soul?

  The question knotted her stomach, but she struggled to keep her face passive, free of judgment no matter how she dreaded the answer. He opened his eyes.

  “I wasn’t the only one there.”

  Tell me the truth, she wanted to say, but the sentiment suggested she thought he owed her and she didn’t want anyone thinking that.

  “Azrael was there, too.”

  “The angel of death?” She shook her head and went back to dabbing the patchwork of cuts on his face, hand trembling. “I don’t understand. Why did you both need to go?”

  “He doesn’t work for the good guys anymore.”

  “Oh.”

  “He was there to take Father Dominic the other way.”

  Sister Mary-Therese’s heart jumped. She pursed her lips and made a conscious effort to keep the distress and disappointment she felt from showing in her eyes.

  “And what did you do?”

  He gasped as she picked another chunk of glass out of his face and wiped blood away. So many questions begged asking, but she knew to let him tell it his way, in his time. She’d dealt with enough alcoholics and junkies to know if she pressured him, she’d end up with half-truths at best. Her nature dictated she should take him at his word, so she wanted to offer the best chance his word would be truth.

  “Icarus?”

  “I let him.”

  She stopped. Stopped tending his wounds, stopped looking at him, stopped breathing. A minute passed and the air in the apartment grew heavier. Thoughts and emotions wrestled in that minute, fighting to see who would be heard. She swabbed another cut, this time pressing harder than before, making him wince.

  “Do you know what you’ve done?” Her voice remained level but its firmness left little
doubt she worked hard to keep emotion in check.

  “It gets worse.”

  “Worse than condemning a man to Hell?”

  “Worse for me. Azrael shot him. Made it look like I killed Father Dominic.”

  “You had a gun?”

  His gaze dropped to the floor like he might find a suitable answer buried in the ragged carpet. He remained silent and, after a minute, Sister Mary-Therese continued.

  “Perhaps this is your punishment.”

  “The things he did to me...I couldn’t think about anything else.”

  There it was: a small confirmation of her suspicions. A tightly wound clockspring of guilt coiled in her chest. Sister Mary-Therese swallowed hard.

  It’s too late. There’s nothing to be done.

  “God says turn the other cheek.”

  “He also says an eye for an eye.”

  She pushed away from the sofa, grimacing with the popping of her knees as she stood.

  “Wash your cuts daily, Icarus. Keep them clean.” She bent and retrieved the first-aid kit and iodine, capping the one and clicking closed the clasps on the other, then offered both to him. “Take these. It’s time for you to go.”

  “But, Sister--”

  “I love you, Icarus, and I can help you physically, but the rest is between you and God.” She struggled to keep her hands from shaking. Sometimes a man must find his own way. She set the first-aid box aside and grabbed his hand. “You are not a mortal man. Your link to the creator no longer flows through me.”

  Tears rimmed her eyes; she fought to hold them back. For years, she’d watched him from afar. She owed his mother at least that much after what she’d been through. And now she felt as she had when he disappeared from the orphanage: like she could have done more. When she found him living on the street and took him in, saw him through addictions, nursed him back to health and sanity when he had no one else, it was as much her salvation as it was his. Never before or again did she feel so much like a mother. His death crushed her and she’d been elated when he returned. As she looked down at his lacerated face, she felt the anguish she imagined a mother must feel when it seems like all those years have gone for naught.