Ikon: Eternal Life For A Living

Ikon is a story about an undead man and an undeaf man (hear me out) trying very hard not to die (again) smuggling stolen religious iconography across the Transcarpathian countryside. Aleksandr Kogan came back from Afghanistan with all of his limbs, but only so much of his hearing - and just in time for the collapse of the country he grew up in. Six years later, he's resorted to counterfeiting -- money -- to stay afloat in the absolute state of the Russian economy, under the inevitable thumb of an extortionist who calls himself a 'security company'. When he can't keep pace, his brother hooks him up with an international art dealer seeking "copies" of provenance documentation for religious artwork to be sold overseas. Illegal, but, so is counterfeiting. Medical bills need paid. Azariah -- who goes by many names and many faces -- is an undead servant of the underworld who should be aiding those in the grave, but instead, he's had to crawl out of the one that some asshole art smuggler threw him in for just trying to fulfill divine imperatives, here. And while his would-be murderer must fancy himself above the law, Azariah intends to show him death is no institution. Complicated, when your would-be murderer is also your traveling companion's new employer. IKON: Eternal Life For A Living is a supernatural crime-thriller inspired by a soup of The Book of Tobit, Comrade Criminal by Stephen Handelman, Balto-Slavic pagan mythology, and the movies Брат and Брат II, written by someone who grew up on Coen Brothers and Leslie Nielsen.