Sentinel of Heaven (16 page)

“I'm not sure
I get it.”

He snorted. 
Showed her the tree being cut down, sent to the lumber mill, planed and cut to
size and length, then being pulled out here in a truck, cut to final dimensions
and bolted into place to become this post. 

“You know
that’s not oak wood, right?  It’s actually pine.”

Leo stung her
with a little spike of static – details!  Still feeling her wave of perplexity,
he concentrated hard – and blue blocky letters rose up on the watercolor
picture now representing the post.

REMINDED IT.

“Oh!  You
reminded it of the time it was new, and it went back to that?”

Yes,
absolutely.

“Wait... why
was that so difficult for you, the words?”

Emotions:
easy.  Pictures: slightly less easy.  Words, spoken or written: difficult to
transmit.  He shrugged – just the way it was.

“Then how can
you understand me, speaking like this?”  She relaxed enough to remember her
lunch and open the bag, the feather sitting on her bad knee in a place of
honor.

Leo sent back
a wave of self-confidence that said as loud as the actual words: 'I'm that
good'.

Then he
returned her last response to her, allowing her to 'hear' it as he did.

It was a bit
like listening to someone talk through a badly tuned two-way radio; static
blurred the voice into meaningless noise but the subtle emotions carried through
on a different band, so to speak.  Only by knowing exactly what she’d said
could she translate it for herself again: question regarding
understanding/knowing, specifying Leo, shading to indicate current exchange,
qualification regarding human speech.

She chewed her
first bite of sandwich thoughtfully.

Talking
with me like this must be like speaking with someone who only speaks a little
of your language.  Great big generalizations, only the most common terms, lots
of pictures to show what the other person wouldn't know the words for yet. 
Having to listen to bad accents and poor pronunciations.

Moira
concentrated hard, shutting her eyes.  She sent a tendril of hopeful apology,
then a picture of herself shrinking, becoming a child again.  She put her child-self
outside a picture of a little red school building, carrying a book bag and a
lunch box.

Leo's response
was a tapestry, more complicated than hers but still simplistic compared to
what she was sure he was capable of creating: pride in her and in her effort,
affection for her (both her adult and child-like learning self), a
determination to help her, a delighted anticipation in their further talks in
this medium.

He took her
picture and added himself into it, leaning far down over her child-self to take
her hand – then showed her growing up until she was her current self, walking
hand in hand with him.

Moira
responded by adding a chair to the picture and stepping up on it, her kissing
him and him blushing bright red.

He chuckled
silently and released the picture, now strolling through the wooden posts and
putting hands on them, restoring two at a time.  She worked her way through her
lunch.

Bread...
good/safe, today-qualifier, question mark?

Leo smiled at
her effort, although he echoed back caution against over-extending herself and
permission to go back to ‘talking’ normally if she needed.  Then he admitted
that no, previously the sandwich bread was
not
still good this
morning, but he did the same “reminding” that he was doing to the parts of the
patio deck.

Picture of all
the Tupperware leftovers around him on the floor in the kitchen in process of
being discarded, why-question?

He
'enunciated' the complicated idea carefully: yesterday-qualifier, picture of his
hands glowing with magic light, shades of uncertainty.  Picture of the
chocolate cookies, also glowing.

Or, in
English: Yesterday I wasn't so sure I could do this.  I tested it on the
cookies.

She swallowed
hard and broke out laughing.  “You bastard!” she exclaimed.  He smiled his
little smile at her again.

They fell into
a comfortable silence; Leo working on restoring the boards and Moira finishing
her meal.  The day was cold and it made her joints ache where she sat in the
car but she was still loathe to leave it... she hoped she'd never get over her
fascination with his body.

He was in the
cranberry red pants again; they suited his coloring.  The grey sweatpants were
washed and laid out to dry on the patio table's bench.  It was interesting how
he'd move, how he'd shift his wings to balance whenever he bent to pick up a
board.  She knew from her experience with them that they had very real weight
for feathered things.

Every time the
sun would strike down through the weak and shifting clouds a beam would kiss
across his back (as he had done hers the night before), throwing golden sparks
across his wings.  The more defuse light would bring out the pearly shine
instead.

He gleamed
like a cut gem, something meant to captivate the human mind with its luster and
brilliance.  Still, Moira had never been a woman after too much finery; other
things about him drew her attention.  The way the muscles in his thighs and
lower back flexed, for example.

Or how the
loosely tied pants rode low on his hips, revealing the tops of those hard
curving lines where his legs joined his body.

Or that one
bead of sweat that was trailing down the cords of his throat to drop in the
hollow between his collarbones, and how much she wanted to lick it away.

She felt his
mind seize on hers at that and send a wave of amusement – I caught you looking!

“I can't help
it; you're gorgeous,” she answered, then sighed.  “But I have to go back to
work now.”

He flipped his
hands at her presence, sending a promise of completion – go, go; the deck will
be done when you get home.

She bit her
lip mentally on the salutation that nearly left her soul to go to his (
Love
you...
), sending instead “Good bye for now, dearheart.”

Leo responded
with his own wave of affection, then let the link lapse.  She put the feather
back in her wallet and gathered up her things again to head inside.

Upon return to
her desk she began to delve into encryption and obfuscation methods and got
some hits right away.  The first key she'd found yesterday for example was
something called “ROT13”, which meant that each character was rotated thirteen
letters in the alphabet from its starting point.

The second
item she'd discovered was a simple number substitution cipher – once she could
guess that the first letter should have been C, she had been able to crack the
rest.

A few more of
the examples she had were more of the same, other numbers and other alphabet
substitutions.  “Be Sure To Drink Your Ovaltine”, she thought.  Thank God that
laziness was a common human characteristic.

Some of the
others were even more basic: one account was spelled SROTCELLOC, a mirror
reverse of the correct order. 
Well done, Alucard... Was I asleep when I
researched this case? 
She looked at the date, which was five months ago.

Ahhh, no –
I'd just been stricken with a horrible case of Erica, and it's taken me a while
to recover.

Still, people
could be clever.  Just for giggles, someone had reversed the spelling and
then
performed a number substitution; that one had taken her the better part of
forty-five minutes and an entire sheet of paper to break.

Then there was
a body armor company that had an account in their books named “Cello Torch Set”. 
Mmmmm, really?
  Moira plugged it into an anagram website that came
back with “The Collectors” inside the first ten results.

Guess the
dog is called G-I-B-O-N on that one...

She had
cleared away half of her questionable accounts through one simple method or
another, now that she knew what each would have in common.  The rest were
probably going to be more difficult, including one that was written tantalizing
on a scrap someone had torn out of the back of an old Bible, a page from
Revelations 6.  It read simply:

ETRNWORFNGQFF

un for get

angela's
birthday - 6/7/1982

She was dying
to sink her teeth into that one but the clock on her PC hit twenty 'til five
and she knew she wouldn't want to stop once started.

Moira
performed her clandestine backup again, packing her belongings away and
unplugging the drive as soon as it was done to slip back into her bags.

She managed to
hit the streets right on the leading edge of the traffic and it felt like the
car was flying, going home.

As she pulled
down the drive way and turned around the corner of the house Moira saw Leo had
been as good as his word – the deck was entirely back together, as clean and
yellow as if the wood had been brought down from the lumber yard this morning.

Even better –
he was leaning nonchalantly against the rail, wearing his pants
and
the shirt she'd altered for him.  He may have even brushed his hair; it didn't
look as tousled as it had been earlier in the day.  Moira pressed down hard on
the brake and nearly did a face-plant on her steering wheel.  His lips quirked
as she parked the car and got out, her eyes never leaving him.

“You look
amazing,” she breathed, walking up the patio stairs.  He turned in place for
her review.  With the shirt on he was changed – before, he looked like some
escaped martial artist, wild and powerful.  This appearance was more of a
really tall and buff gym teacher, the one over whom all the little college
girls get desperate crushes...

Her face fell
a bit at that thought and he was quick to see it.  He took her hands in his and
raised his eyebrows.

“It's not the
shirt, the shirt is fine – and you look great in it,” she began.  “I just had
the thought that it... civilizes you somehow.  And I'm not sure I want to. 
Civilize you, that is.  Do you understand?”

He smiled a
lazy-lidded smile that she felt all the way to her toes, then bent and raised
her hand to his lips and kissed it gently before releasing her to peel off the
shirt.

Slowly.

Oh.  My. 
God.
  Seeing him undress was like unwrapping the best Christmas present
ever.

His head came
loose from the collar, mane wild again; he stripped the sleeves from his huge
bare arms and turned the garment right-side out in his hands as he freed his
wings.

Moira
swallowed hard.  “Yeah.  That's my angel,” she breathed.

He pointed to
his bare chest, and the shirt, and then back over his shoulder in the direction
of the road and eventually the town.

“When we're
out there, sure,” she said.

He gestured to
himself and to her and stepped closer, sweeping the shirt in his hand aside so
it was no longer between them.

“I'm perfectly
fine with that,” Moira answered. 
Better than fine.

He gave her
that strangely sensual look once more, as if her every thought was printed in
the blush on her face, then smiled and stepped down to the car to bring in her
bags.

She opened the
door – and a fantastic smell met her in the kitchen; some form of beef
stroganoff or similar that was simmering in a crock pot she was almost certain
she didn't own before she left this morning.  Her stomach growled an eager
approval.

Leo put away
her bags in their places and guided her to sit down at the table again, with
water glass and medication.  He glanced into the crock pot but didn't lift the
clear lid, instead pulling down a small pot and filling it with water from the
sink.

“How much
longer will it be?” she asked him, surprised at herself.  His eyes were
twinkling when he mouthed 'twenty minutes'.

“I never
thought I'd have a house guest that could cook so well,” she admitted, her chin
in her palm as she watched him avidly.  “I'm actually hungry!”

He turned on
the stove eye to high, set the pot on it, and stepped away from it to settle at
her feet.

“A watched pot
never boils, mmm?”  He shrugged in response.

“Are you just
going to stare at me for twenty minutes, then?”

Leo affected
an innocent expression and meandered his hand; he had a few other suggestions.

“Such as?”

He reached up
and touched her lips.

“More kisses?”

He pulled a
mournful glance, as if to remind her that so far this afternoon there hadn't
been
any
kisses.

She stood up,
testing her knee.  Still cooperating at the moment, and the evening dose of
meds should keep it that way.  “You, sir, are going to be the death of me,”
Moira told him.

Leo only
smiled and opened his arms.  She sank down onto his lap, letting her legs fall
on either side of his hips.  He pulled her closer still and braced his arm
against where her back was weak, supporting her completely.

If you had
told me on my birthday last month,
she thought dreamily,
that I'd be
making out on the kitchen floor with a gorgeous man before Thanksgiving, I
would have slapped you for lying.

But no, here
she was, holding onto the back of his neck, fingers twining and knotting in the
sleek hair there.  He was embracing her in one arm and cradling her head in his
other hand – kissing her so deeply that they inhaled and exhaled like divers
trading the air.

You're just
driving each other mad with this, said the little voice.

But we
both want it – you can feel how much we both want it,
Moira flung back at
her subconscious. 
And someday he'll want more, as much as I do.

Leo moved
then, shifting his legs beneath them so that he could stretch her out on the
old linoleum.  He leaned over her a long moment, then kissed the tip of her
nose and smiled.  Ten minutes, he mouthed as he pulled away from her to add
some egg noodles to the now-boiling pot.