On Unfaithful Wings: An Icarus Fell Novel, #1

By Bruce Blake

On Unfaithful Wings (An Icarus Fell Novel #1)

To some, death is the end; to others, a beginning. To Icarus Fell, it should have been a relief from a life gone seriously awry.

But death had other plans.

Icarus doesn't believe that the man awaiting him when he wakes up in a cheap motel room is really the archangel Michael, or that God's right hand wants him to help souls on their way to Heaven. Icarus doesn't believe there is a Heaven, so why should they want his help?

But the man claiming to be the archangel tempts him with an offer he can't ignore--harvest enough souls and get back the life he wished he'd had.

It seems Icarus has nothing to lose, until he botches a harvest and the soul that went to Hell instead of Heaven comes back to make him pay by threatening to take away the life he hoped to win back.

To save the wife and son he already lost once, Icarus will have to become the man he never was. Somehow, he will have to learn to believe.

"The next book in this series cannot come out soon enough for this reader. Not just my favorite book of the year, but one of my favorite books ever."

"I loved this book."

"Bruce Blake's On Unfaithful Wings is a great urban fantasy novel. I love good character development in a story's protagonist and Blake nails it with Icarus Fell. I found myself rooting for him from the get go and laughing out loud at some of his observations."

"On Unfaithful Wings was an impressive first novel. All of the characters were interesting and engaging, but in particular the main character and his struggle to reconcile with his new identity/job.
This is one of those stories that stays with me long after I read it and I'll be on the lookout for more from this author."

"This is just, simply, amazing. Icarus is one of the best characters I've ever "met", chock full of virtues and faults and doubts and worries and a simple HUMANNESS that comes through so clearly, I almost expect to run into him around the next corner."

"Icarus Fell is a flawed man but a wonderful character. From the moment I started reading On Unfaithful Wings I was pulled along by this interesting character and wanting to know what would happen next."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bruce Blake
• Release date: Jul 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9780986881152

Book preview

"...with melting wax and loosened strings

Sunk hapless Icarus on unfaithful wings;

Headlong he rushed through the affrighted air,

With limbs distorted and dishevelled hair;

His scattered plumage danced upon the wave,

And sorrowing Nereids decked his watery grave;

O'er his pale corse their pearly sea-flowers shed,

And strewed with crimson moss his marble bed;

Struck in their coral towers the passing bell,

And wide in ocean tolled his echoing knell."

-Erasmus Darwin

Chapter One

Istood with my back to the church, much the way I’d lived my life.

Rain poured down the eaves, splashing my shoes. Each drop pattering against the leather felt as though it landed directly on my mood. I tugged my suit jacket tighter and glanced at my watch—almost eleven p.m. If the rain didn’t let up soon, Trevor would be in bed, his belated birthday present another day late. After letting him down again, Rae probably wouldn’t let me give him the gift, anyway. A heavy sigh drew the taste of rain on dry soil into my lungs as I suppressed the desire to call her names in my head, to blame her for everything. It wasn’t her fault.

There I stood, spirit as dampened by the April shower as my clothing, thinking I waited for the rain to stop, not knowing it was something else I waited for, something entirely different.

My death.

I shifted again and the plastic Best Buy bag hidden under my jacket to keep it dry slipped out and hit the stairs with a splash.

Damn it.

I stooped to retrieve the bag, feeling unremorseful for swearing outside a house of worship. There was no God to hear anyway and—with the Pope dry in the Vatican—who’d be offended? A plump drop of rain punished my Godly disdain with a direct hit to my left eye as I fetched my son’s gift from the top step.

I suspected the rain might not let up any time soon.

It probably couldn’t have happened any differently. Do we have any choice in what we do, or is it all pre-planned? I used to believe we did, but my beliefs—or lack of them—were about to be thrown into question, along with my opinion of what happens after we die.

I stepped back and shook moisture from the bag impatiently. It had been half an hour since the unexpected downpour began, its torrent catching me unprepared and forcing me from my planned path—to sneak Trevor his birthday present without Rae noticing me—to my current hiding spot at the church. This church of all churches.

See what I mean about choice?

If the rain wasn’t going to let up, I’d just have to get wet. I stepped from under the pathetic cover of the church’s eaves and my foot splashed in an unseen puddle, cold water soaking the Wal-Mart loafer on my left foot. Raindrops pelted my cheek and I bit back another curse as I jammed the Xbox game purchased for Trevor’s birthday into the pocket of my suit jacket and pulled the coat over my head. I felt like an idiot as my saturated footwear slurped with each step down the concrete path.

Halfway across the churchyard, I noticed two men blocking the path ahead. They wore jackets with hoods pulled up to hide their faces, keep the rain from their heads. At first glimpse, the sheets of rain gave them a ghostly quality, a glow, and made me doubt my eyes. My gaze flickered sideways to the graveyard beside the church, with its broken, moss-covered headstones canted at odd angles, but I quickly dismissed the thought. A trick of rain and poor light.

There’s no such thing as ghosts.

I slowed, wondering if the men could be avoided. Probably not. Living in the city my entire life taught me to be wary of men hanging out on the streets at night with their faces hidden. But this wasn’t the streets, it was a churchyard, and rain this heavy gave good reason to use a hood. Maybe they’d come for a little midnight prayer, eager for the best pew in the house.

Right.

Good evening, gentlemen, I ventured drawing closer to them. Beautiful night, isn’t it?

Apparently they didn’t think so. The man nearest me pulled a knife from under his forest-green rain slicker and jabbed it toward me, stabbing the rain between us. Hell of a reaction.

He could’ve just said ‘no’.

Give me your money, he growled.

I know you’re supposed to do what a mugger says: it’s your best shot at survival, but I didn’t. Maybe the rain made me hesitate, or the wetness in my shoes, or knowing the boy would be disappointed again; whichever, my brain wouldn’t let my body do what it knew it should. I stood taller than either of them, but they had the knife. All I had on them was fifteen years of poor eating and neglect.

C’mon guys. It’s a crummy night and I’m two weeks late for my boy’s birthday. Let a guy be, will you? There must be some little old ladies running around practically begging to have their social security cheques stolen.

Shut up and give us your money, asshole.

The man holding the knife remained in front of me as the other circled to my right, presumably to hinder any escape. I watched him out of the corner of my eye, saw rain bouncing off his gray raincoat, noticed that his runners didn’t match, but he quickly passed from view, blocked by the jacket held foolishly over my head, keeping my hair dry in case they killed me. Cool rain peppered my face as I dropped the coat back onto my shoulders and reached to pull my wallet from the inner pocket. The man with the knife lunged forward, brandishing the blade at my nose. My stomach jumped into my chest and I threw both hands up in the air like a good mugging victim.

Whoa. You want my money, you need my wallet.

The tip of the knife waggled in the air, gesturing for me to continue. I stared at the point of the blade, at the man’s fingerless glove and the way he’d chewed his fingers until they looked painful. Beyond his arm, I thought I saw a smile hidden in the darkness beneath the hood.

I sighed, a shuddering breath lamenting how little my wallet contained for them to steal as much as it did the fact they were stealing it. The man behind me grabbed it away before it cleared my pocket, his nails raking my wrist, and rifled through the meager contents. He snatched the three bills it contained, made a face at the fifteen bucks, and then took the VISA card I’d fought so hard to get after ruining my credit a few years back. Joke’s on him if he uses it, they’ll probably ask for a payment first.

He showed the sparse loot to his partner.

Fifteen bucks? That’s it?

Look at this. He’d dug out my driver’s license. I knew this would happen. The guy’s name is Icarus Fell. Icarus, like in the Iron Maiden song

Yeah, I said. The guy who named me didn’t like me much. Call me Ric.

Sure, Icarus, the guy holding the knife said in a schoolyard-bully lilt. With a name like Icarus Fell, I’d heard that tone enough to recognize it. He stepped toward me, blade extended to within an inch of my face. I wanted to take an equal step away, but knew his partner wouldn’t like that, so I stood my ground, hoping to look more brave than stupid. What else you got?

Nothing. That’s it.

Check his pockets. He put something in his pocket.

The man tossed my wallet onto the grass where it landed with a mucky-sounding splat. He advanced on me and this time I moved. He grabbed my arm, pulled me toward him.

Don’t do nothing stupid.

Why didn’t he tell me that twenty-five or thirty years ago?

He patted my pants pockets first—the most action I’d seen in a while—then moved to the pockets of my suit jacket; the right hand outer one produced a hollow, plasticky thud. I cringed.

What’s that?

Nothing, I said inching away. A game for my kid.

Give it up.

Guys, really. What are you going to do with a video game?

His fingers dug into my bicep. Give it to me.

I already missed his birthday. Can’t you let me keep it? I yanked against his grip knowing I shouldn’t—people got killed for less—but I couldn’t let Trevor down. Not again. Take everything else. I won’t tell anyone.

There is nothing else. Give it to me, the knife-wielder demanded.

I wondered what Rae would tell Trevor when he didn’t get a present from me again. Probably that, since someone else was his ‘real’ father, I didn’t care.

Adrenaline flooded my brain, but it didn’t heighten my senses the way they describe in books. Instead, it made me stupid. Before I realized what I was doing, I swung at the man holding my arm, my fist contacting his nose with a satisfying crunch. The move surprised both of us and he lifted his hands to his face.

It took a second to comprehend that he’d let me go. My heartbeat quickened, pulsed in my ears. I ran, or attempted to: dress shoes aren’t made for sprinting on wet grass. Both men jumped me before I got going, riding me to the ground like they were the cowboys and I was the calf. A knee pressed into my back, an elbow in my ear as my cheek sank into soggy lawn knocking breath from my lungs and hope from my heart. My clothes soaked instantly, plastering cloth to skin, the smell of wet earth filled my nose, literally.

You stupid bastard, one of them said, but the mud in one ear and elbow in the other precluded me from identifying which one. Couldn’t give us the stupid game, could you? He yanked it out of my pocket.

The pain of the knife’s tip pushing through the flesh of my lower back into my kidney hurt more than I could ever have imagined. The shock of it made me suck a mixture of cold air and dirty rain water through taut lips and expel it all in an agonized howl. The knife rose and fell again, then again, perforating my internal organs, each stab more painful than the last. Each time it pulled free, I prayed to a God I didn’t believe in that it would end, that I would get up and hurry on my way to see Trevor.

My body jerked and spasmed beneath the men straddling me, my bladder let go. After the fourth time the knife entered me, my flesh went numb. It may have pierced me a few more times, but I lost interest in counting. I gasped air in through my mouth and the breath tasted like the black crud scraped off bread left too long in the toaster. And blood.

That’s enough. Let’s go, one of them said, presumably the one not engaged in shredding my bowels.

Their weight lifted off my back and my mind told me to roll over and sit up, defend against further attack, but my muscles would have nothing of such a proposal, so I lay on the wet grass doing the only thing I could: bleed. Maybe I wept a little, too, but who can tell in the rain?

I guess Icarus really did fall, didn’t he, Ric?

Their laughter didn’t sting nearly as much as the knife, and it dissipated much more quickly as they ran off. I was used to being teased but couldn’t say the same of being knifed. After they left, my ragged breathing and the sound of rain pattering around and on me became my world. I never realized how much noise rain hitting grass made until my ear was pressed to the ground with no choice but to listen.

My stomach knotted as the gravity of my situation set in: after eleven on a Wednesday night, bleeding on the lawn outside an empty church in the kind of downpour that convinced people not to venture out for a chat with God.

Did I mention I was bleeding? A lot?

Water pooled in my ear canal until the unnaturally loud plop of rain drops splashing into the tiny pond drowned out even the sound of my breath. Not steady, metronomic drips like I imagined a water torture would be, but an uneven patter that, should I live long enough, would likely prove equally effective at driving me crazy.

Help.

In my head, the single word came out a scream, shaking trees and rattling windows, attracting the attention needed to save me so I could see my son again, even if it was for the last time. In reality, it was more of a peep. I closed my eyes and sucked dirty water through my nose then coughed it out my mouth. The pain it induced in my back and side hurt worse than the original stabbing, like someone stood over me with a hot poker pressed to my side, except I was cold and wet and bleeding to death, too. A hot poker didn’t sound so bad.

Help, I peeped.

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I don’t know how long I was passed out, but when consciousness forced itself mercilessly back into my head, not even a finger would move. The rain may have stopped, or maybe not; my skin tingled like someone had hooked me to a car battery. Water ran into my eyes and I blinked it away, a process which felt like it took an exceptionally long time.

Help, I ventured once more, but produced no more sound than a sigh.

So this is how it ends.

Memories passed before my eyes, the frames flickering like an old silent movie. I made it stop. I didn’t want the horrid experience called life to fill my final thoughts. Forcing my mind to dig for the good times—an admittedly difficult endeavor—I came up only with those first few years with Rae. She was beautiful and she loved me back then and I hadn’t disappointed her or Trevor yet. The good times lasted maybe four years, until I screwed it up, then things spiraled downward, out of control, until our split four years ago. That’s when she spouted the revelation that Trevor and I didn’t share any genes.

There’s a saying: you have to hit the bottom to find somewhere to plant your feet. For a while, I lived like a man without legs.

I took what felt like a few hours to blink the memories out of my head, but they wouldn’t go. So much for keeping life from passing before my eyes. I heard a voice, too, small and faint and indistinct, the words eluding me. Probably my mind dredging up Father Dominic’s voice telling me the reasons why I’d be condemned to Hell, or listing my sins like he’d done in my youth. Now, a little shy of forty, the list would have been considerably longer.

The voice grew louder, but the sounds still meant nothing. Whether the words were foreign or the muscles in my ears and brain simply gave up on comprehension, I didn’t know, but it became apparent the sounds didn’t originate inside my head. Hope flickered in my chest; if I could make the voice see me, maybe I’d be all right. I strained every muscle, funneling every remaining bit of energy toward moving something or making a noise. I managed a grunt, nothing more.

My eyes slid closed, resigned to the rest of my life seeping onto the church’s lawn, washed away by a spring storm, until I heard an identifiable sound—the splash of feet trampling soggy grass. I opened my eyes and saw a muddy white shoe. It looked comfortable.

I slipped into darkness.

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The latch clicked behind Sister Mary-Therese as she pulled the door closed, leaving the questionable odor emanating from the homeless men bunked down in the church hall for the cool and rainy night. She stood, back to the churchyard, listening to the raindrops patter against the stone walk, the sound bringing a smile to her lips. Clouds, fog, rain, snow: they all filled her with wonder. She especially loved thunderstorms. Everywhere one looked, examples of the beauty of God’s earth were abundant, but weather like this reminded her of His might. Often she thought it fortunate she didn’t live somewhere tornadoes or hurricanes frequented—she’d be tempted to chase them. At least, she might have in her younger days.

No thunder tonight, though, only rain. She stowed her wire-rimmed glasses in her pocket, pulled the collar of her coat up in an attempt to keep the hair pinned in a bun at the back of her head dry, and turned toward the church lawn, ready to descend the steps and head for home. The sign outside the bank down the street flashed eleven-fifteen p.m.—later than she normally left. She’d gotten busy planning the annual spring bake sale, an extra task taken on after Father Dominic took suddenly ill. His condition worried her, but she breathed deep through her nose, allowing the smells of the weather into her soul: damp blossoms, wet grass, the delicious aroma of rain drops on concrete. These smells calmed her heart.

With feelings of peace and God’s power brimming in her, she went down the five stone steps onto the path, her face turned up as she walked, letting cool raindrops run down her cheeks. Halfway to the stone wall marking the edge of church land, Sister Mary-Therese stopped. A sound amongst the symphony of rain on grass and leaves and stone caught her attention, a small noise, insignificant, maybe her imagination. She glanced around the churchyard, lips pressed tight together as she realized she’d left her satchel and the can of pepper spray it contained behind.

No one behind her. No one on the street.

Then what was it?

She looked back at door, considered going back for her satchel, or for help, but something drew her on. She moved down the walk, choosing her steps carefully, her lips moving in a silent prayer. The path bent closer by the old oak and her step faltered. The tree usually evoked thoughts of children playing hide-and-seek or tag around it during the summer, but it felt ominous today, dark, like it loomed over the path. She pressed her fingers to her lips as she spied a shadowy outline on the ground beneath the limbs of the oak. With so little light she couldn’t see what it was. Perhaps a bag of garbage dumped on the church lawn? It wouldn’t have been the first time.

No. It’s too big. It’s big enough to be a man.

The thought prompted her off the path, fear forgotten, concern taking over. Her heart beat fast as the soles of her shoes squelched in the grass, the saturated dirt sucking at them, trying to pull them off her feet. Three steps closer confirmed her worst fears.

Are you all right? she called, voice trembling.

No answer.

She crouched at the man’s side, the dark making it impossible to determine whether injury or intoxication laid him out here. Hand quaking, she reached out her hand and rested it gently on the man’s shoulder.

Sir, are you all right?

A car went by on the street, tossing light over the church’s stone wall and across the lawn. Sister Mary-Therese thought about signaling for help, but the face it illuminated stopped her, forced her heart into her throat.

Oh, dear God. Icarus.

†‡†

If hospitals are for the sick, those in need of help, why are they such unpleasant places?

I no longer felt any pain and the tingling in my skin had calmed, allowing me to focus on the gurney’s squeaky wheel as paramedics shuttled me across the sidewalk, then jarringly out of the somber night into fluorescent-light-hell. Doctors and nurses in pristine whites and muted greens hovered around me, their silhouettes blissfully blocking out the too-bright light as they poked and prodded, hung I.V.s and called for blood. By then, it was too late to help me, I knew it but lacked a voice to tell them. I was flattered they showed so much concern for preserving my life but felt a little guilty they worked so fervently to save someone un-salvageable—a doctor term they don’t like the general public to know they use. Wouldn’t want a dying patient to feel like a car with a thrown rod.

The world blended into an indistinct meld of whites and greens, barked instructions and beeping equipment. The blaring lights, the crinkle of a plastic-covered mattress beneath my soaked clothes, the smells found only in a hospital, they all dimmed together, like a full-sense movie fading to black. Bring down the lights, cue relief.

A weight lifted from my chest and limbs, as though my mass disappeared, like floating on my back in a pool. I opened my eyes expecting to see the hospital’s glaring lights above me, but I didn’t. Instead, I stood amongst the medical staff as they brushed past me without noticing. The team of doctors and nurses fought soundlessly in organized chaos to save another me lying on the table in the emergency ward.

I looked like hell.

Blood and rain soaked my white shirt, staining it a uniform pink. My suit jacket was gone, probably cut off by the paramedics who brought me here and a pang of regret tweaked my chest—it was my only suit not purchased at the Sears bargain basement. Mud smeared my face and stuck my dark brown hair to my forehead. Some mortician would clean me up, probably make me look better than in life. Hopefully, he wouldn’t use too much make-up. Rae always called me a pretty man and, though years of hard living dulled my looks, unprofessional application of cosmetics would either make me look like a clown, or worse, some old queer’s boy-toy. Above all else, I hoped he wouldn’t disguise the expression on my face, one I wanted so badly to wear in life but never found: relief.

This isn’t happening.

It was the only thought I could drum up while I stood there watching. No sadness or disappointment, no anger or relief, only disbelief.

Sound crept back into my little world of silence. First, a persistent, high-pitched tone, then the voices of the doctors, the squeak of rubber soles on linoleum. An overweight nurse pushed a cart to the bed and one of the doctors grabbed the two paddles sitting on it. The nurse squirted goo on them and he pressed them to my exposed chest.

Clear!

My body jerked along with the me on the table and pain shot through my chest. The electricity passed through me, yanked me back toward my body. I fought it like a fish on a hook. The guy on the table didn’t look very good, even by dead guy standards. The machine buzzed again, the doctor shouted again, electricity jolted me again. My feet skittered on the linoleum but I held my ground.

I’m not going back there.

Not that it mattered, anyway: none of this was real. I was in the body, this scene just a creation of my mind, an amusement before the final curtain fell. Nothingness, the end of it all, would be next on the program, but the medical staff disagreed and kept me hanging around for the better part of an hour.

A curious calm settled in as they injected me with solutions with names unpronounceable without years of education and shocked me with enough juice to make a shock-therapy patient jealous. I’d been raised by Father Dominic as a ward of the church, thoroughly versed in God and Heaven and all the requisite trappings, but the way my life had gone convinced me long ago that, if those biblical rumors held any truth, then God must hate me. And, let’s face it, if God existed, he probably looked down one day on the shite he created, packed up his tent and went somewhere else to give it another shot, hoping for better luck on the second go-round

Okay, that’s it everyone. I’m calling it, a doctor with an overbite said glancing at the wall clock. Time of death: two forty-seven a.m.

I surge of panic caught me unaware. Calling it? Giving up? This was really the end? I didn’t get to give Trevor his birthday present.

Do we know who this guy is?

They found his ID on the scene. Looks like a mugging. Nurse Overweight looked to the cop standing at the curtain. Got a name, Ted?

Yeah. Icarus Fell, thirty-seven years-old.

Icarus Fell? Dr. Overbite said. You’re kidding, right?

Nope. That’s what it says on his driver’s license.

A rubber glove snapped as the doctor removed it. Guess his parents didn’t like him much.

Their conversational tones irked me—where did the caring go? Thankfully, sound faded. My mind still told me I stood amongst them like a medical student learning how to make fun of a dead patient’s name. I stepped back from the mélange of medical personnel, glanced around the room, waiting for darkness, emptiness, nothingness.

Nothing is exactly what I got.

Dr. Overbite left; Nurse Overweight pulled a sheet up, covering my corpse all the way to the top of my head leaving a tuft of wet, spiky hair remaining in view. I stepped up to the gurney, alone with my corpse, and stared at the pink, rose-like blossoms of blood soaking through the sheet. Soon, someone would come and wheel away this inanimate piece of meat, take it somewhere to be identified by my next-of-kin: Rae and Trevor. I rested my hand on the corpse’s shoulder, sighed heavily, and wondered if they knew I loved them.

I didn’t get to say good-bye.

This was really it, then. I surveyed the area, heard the sounds of movement beyond the curtain partitioning my deathbed from the rest of the ER. Were both my morbid beliefs and Father Dominic’s bible wrong? Was I doomed to spend eternity hanging around an emergency room watching the sick and injured dragged in and out? Better than at least one of the priest’s alternatives, but I didn’t believe in Hell any more than I did Heaven. If this was it, the ultimate destination, it promised to be terribly dull.

But maybe it was a chance to see my son again.

I walked toward the curtain, reached out my hand to push it aside, but my fingers passed through like it wasn’t there. Like I wasn’t there.

Every bed in the ER was full. Some of the curtains were pulled closed, like mine had been, others were open. A man sat on one holding a blood-soaked compress on his arm. In another, a white-haired woman reclined with her eyes closed and her breath fogging the clear plastic oxygen mask covering her nose and mouth; a curious gray halo surrounded her head, like a dirty outline on the pillowcase. In a third bed, a feverish boy a year or two short of puberty glanced around the room with nervous eyes; his mother stood at the side of his bed, brushing hair from his sweaty forehead.

I stopped and watched them for a moment, my chest aching for them as I remembered Trevor at age two, fever raging, his dry lips quivering as he muttered about the hallucinations the high fever caused. I’d never been so scared in my life.

Before the sight of them made me cry, I moved on.

I passed through the ER without garnering a look from anyone and exited through an open door into the over-crowded waiting room. People sat on uncomfortable chairs doing their best to avoid eye contact with everyone else in the room. A TV mounted high in one