Sentinel of Heaven (18 page)

Leo surrounded
her with a final rush of feeling, one that culminated in pressure on her lips,
a long-distance kiss.  When Moira returned to her own body she found she had
completely neglected to eat her lunch.  She'd have to sneak it at her desk.

This gave her
something to do for the next hour, as that was about how long it took for her
to stop thinking of how the angel had looked bathing in her back yard.

Once her head
had cleared somewhat (although the thought of him was never far from her mind
now) she focused on attempting to decipher the rest of the account names.

Moira was only
able to get three more done that afternoon.  They were getting more and more
clever with their codes, using combinations of the methods she had been able to
break previously.  One of them had gotten very smart indeed, using a
combination of triangles and different directional arrows that had her stumped
until in a fit of pique she typed the word “collectors” into a document and
changed it into different non-English fonts until she found the one that
matched.  She was still chuckling about that one.

It had to be
done, though.  It was important to prove the link for each one to the
mysterious COLLECTORS.  Only then should she dig for what each group had bought
from or sold to them.  The chain of proof and evidence had to be maintained.

And still that
color picture of the page from Revelations swam in her memory.  “Unforget”?  A
suspiciously strange way of saying “remember”.  Who was Angela?  What was she
to that note-taker and book-defacer?

Figuring that
one out would be a bitch-kitty, but Moira’d wager that it would be worth it.

Despite her
best efforts she wound up smack-dab in the middle of Friday rush-hour traffic,
spending most of it inching forward and dreaming.  A whole two days with Leo,
guilt-free.  What else would he remember?  What other amazing things would he
show her?  And would she finally be able to convince him to speak?

He was
standing on the back patio again when she pulled in, gloriously half-naked in
his grey pants, his wings golden-white in the last rays of the sun.

“You moved the
bushes back,” she said to him as she got out of the car, a bit disappointed. 
Leo only smiled and shrugged wryly, taking her bags to set them on the patio
table.

He didn't
allow her to go inside yet; instead beckoning her to sit on one of the kitchen
chairs which he'd brought out, wrapping a quilt around her and pressing a cup
of hot herbal tea into her hands.

He held up her
pill bottle with a raised eyebrow.

“Just one for
now,” she said.  The agony of the morning had faded to her regular threshold of
pain as was its wont.

He gave her
the little white tablet, then gestured to the back lawn which was covered with
boxes and bags and furniture.

“My God,” she
muttered.  “Was all of this stuffed into the parlor?”

Leo shrugged
and pointed up.  Attic too, he mouthed.

“What a damned
mess.”  She sighed, not quite yet willing to deal with it but Leo was obviously
pushing for the good ol' college try before true nightfall.

“Well.  Go
ahead and assume that any box that has books in it is a 'keeper'.”

He stepped
down into the yard and opened the flaps of the nearest cardboard box.  Nodding
to himself he picked it up – and it vanished from his hands.

“Whoa!” she
shouted, fumbling the mug and only just managing not to drop it or slop the tea
all over herself.  “Where'd you send it?”

He smiled at
her and pointed at the house.  Back inside.

The look she
gave him was incredulous.  “I should be used to your stunts by now!”

Leo gave her a
wide smirk and shook his head.  You haven't seen anything yet!  But he
diligently continued through the boxes, making most vanish and others sort
themselves closer to the porch.  Then he moved to the nearest piece of
furniture – a horsehair-upholstered settee that had seen far better days – and
spread his left wing over it, obviously waiting for her word.

“If I say yes,
where does it go?”

He pointed
again: back inside.

“And if I say
no?”

His two-handed
gesture eloquently mimicked a puff of smoke.  Poof!  Gone.  She took a sip of
the tea.

“I'd often
wondered if any of this dreck was actually worth anything,” she said, almost to
herself.  “Without some serious research I couldn't say for sure.  They could
be just items that a little country farm wife would buy from a catalog and
think was mighty fine, or age and rarity might have made them sought after
these days.”

Leo watched
her, not moving.

“And sometimes
I wondered if selling or even throwing away these things was... disrespectful,
I guess.  To their memory... Mother and Grandmother.  Neither of them had very
much; what's spread out on this lawn was practically all their wealth in life.”

Leo still
stood, wing poised.

Moira ran her
eye over all the furniture she could see: moth-eaten, gouged, in need of
repair.  Someone somewhere might buy some of it, might even pay handsomely for
it.  But she wasn't up to looking for those buyers.  Was it worth the time and
stress it'd take to try to find them?  And if not, what good is keeping
furniture and brick-a-brack that would see no use?

“Send the
furniture.  Get rid of all of it.  I don't want it.”

He nodded and
dropped his wing onto the love-seat.  From where Moira was sitting the item
appeared to dissolve, tearing itself into its composite molecules which then
floated up, disappearing into his feathers.  When he lifted his wing there was
no sign the settee had ever existed, besides the divots in the tall grass that
had been left by its feet.

“Better stunt,”
Moira noted.

Leo worked his
way methodically through the other items.  She studied him at his task and was
satisfied with the realization:  the furniture's destruction only made her feel
less anxious instead of more.  She was letting go of all the things that had dragged
behind her subconsciously like cans tied to a dog's tail.

Finished at
last, he brought her the first of the non-book boxes.

“Heavy, is it?” 
He shrugged; the idea had little meaning for him.  He still lifted it without
effort but she knew she would have struggled with it, bad back or no.

Unwrapping the
ancient newsprint she discovered a set of what must have been Grandmother's “good”
china.  “Never seen this before,” she muttered.  “I know for sure we never used
it.  Good china's for company and we didn't have people over.  Kept ourselves
to ourselves.  It can go.”

He took it
back out to the yard to dispose of it.  Moira looked around the yard wearily,
suddenly as tired as if she'd sprinted a country mile.

“Could we take
the other boxes back inside for tonight?  I swear I'll go through them tomorrow
but today feels like it's gone on forever and I need to sit down somewhere more
comfortable.”

She swallowed
the rest of her almost cold tea at his agreement, folding away the blanket
across her arm and lifting her bags to carry them inside.  Leo'd have to bring
back the chair; Moira figured she'd go straight to the recliner.

She opened the
back door and stepped into the kitchen.  It took her a while to figure out what
was wrong with the room.  When she did her left knee completely gave out from
underneath her, dumping her onto her right hip on the floor in the depth of her
shock.

Leo came in
behind her, carrying the last box – and smiled at her dismay and confusion. 
She turned a slightly wild gaze up to him.

“At first I
wondered why you had made the table smaller,” she managed.  “Then I counted the
cabinets.  There had always been six across that wall – now there are eight but
they're just as big as they were before!

“And the
ceiling!” she exclaimed.  “Leo, your wings aren't brushing it anymore.  You –
you stretched the whole house?!”

Leo broke into
a grin and sketched a courtly bow.

“What else did
you change?”

He set the box
on the floor and lifted her to her feet to give her the tour.

All the doors
were at least half a foot taller but not much wider; he barely had to duck his
forehead to get through.  The bedroom was not much changed beside its ceiling
but the closet was wider – and the bathroom far larger.

The tub's
dimensions had subtly changed – both wider and longer, and the shower head was
higher up the wall.

“Oh dear God,”
Moira breathed, overwhelmed with vertigo.  Leo swung her up into his arms and
bore her to the living room.

Even the
mattress – he'd stretched it from a full size to something the dimensions of a
California King or bigger.  Now it
was
the base of his nest, with
pillows and blankets around its borders to cushion his wings and keep them from
spilling onto the bare floor.

He set her
gently into her recliner, terribly proud of himself.  Dinner?  he asked.

“Not much,
maybe one of the fruit bars...” she murmured, still trying to take it all in. 
How could she explain to someone with this sort of power how unexpectedly
disorienting it would be to see one's life-long home so changed, yet still the
same?

He brought her
the fruit bar and a water glass, and set the last and smallest box in front of
her firmly.

“I'm not going
to get out of this, am I?” she asked, some of her humor slowly returning.  The
larger space would certainly suit both of them, even if it
did
take a
while to get used to.

He shook his
shaggy head as he sat down into the bed-nest, watching her avidly.  She almost
wished he'd gotten her a glass of wine but hated to ask now, once he'd settled.

She opened the
loosely-taped folds of the box.

“Oh,” she
said, a soft noise, as if she'd taken a blow to the abdomen that drove the wind
from her temporarily.

Photo albums. 
She took out the top one and shoved the box aside with her goodish leg,
gesturing for Leo to come closer.

Pages upon
pages of old black and white photos, brown with age under the clear cellophane,
random tintypes scattered among them – all relics of relatives she'd never met
and didn't know, their names lost to the ages.

Pictures
growing closer in time, a few in color.  Her mother appearing unbearably young;
her grandmother looking winsome and happy, eyes quick and full of wit.

Pictures of
her father as a young man.  Smiling.

“Some of them
never get old, do they?” she mused.  “Look, here's my daddy.”

Leo looked
from the picture up to Moira's face and back again.

More pictures
of her mother and father, dating.  Some pictures from the wedding and
reception; the actual album was somewhere in the box but this had a few
representative shots.  And then herself: a chubby pale baby with sober green
eyes, her mother holding her and looking pleased to do so, as if Moira were
precious to her.

“Is it
possible to love someone but not like them very much, Leo?”

He watched her
for a long moment, still flipping through the faded old memories.  He nodded
slowly.

“I loved my
mother.  I did.  I guess I still do.  I don't think we liked each other much at
all, though.  All the liking went out of her when Dad died – he wasn't there to
chivvy her back out of her ill humors, to keep her smiling.

“All there was
left, was me... looking just enough like him to hurt, I'll bet.  Needy. 
Serious.  Bookish.  Unladylike.  Expensive.  Problematic.”

Moira set her
chin in her palm and sighed.  “I still wonder sometimes if we would have
reached an accord, if she'd lived.  I know she would have taken me in – it's
what family does.  Family takes you when no one else would, when nobody wants
to.

“But would we
ever have seen eye-to-eye?  Would we ever have really
liked
each other
as people, or would we still be at odds?”

She reached
out and stroked his hair away from his face, and smiled sadly.  “Oh, she would
have hated you, I think.  The woman I knew of her, at least.  You are tall,
dark, and serious.  Inscrutable.  She hated things that weren't
straight-forward and
you
, my dear, are a delightful puzzle.

“But Daddy
would have loved you.  You'd be the sort of man he'd want to get to know, to
really comprehend.  He would have done his best to make you laugh.  You'd have
understood each other, no matter how little talking you did.”

The one tear
she barely felt rolled down her cheek to her chin and dropped onto the
cellophane.  She wiped it away without thinking.

Reverently Leo
removed the book from her limp hands, closed it, and returned it to the box. 
He opened the wrapper of the fruit bar for her and put it back into her palm
before he carried the cardboard cube away.

“Do you miss
your family?” she asked him when he sat back down, close to her legs.

No, he said
silently, laying his head on her goodish knee.  Not now.

They sat
together in a reverie until the fatigue of the day became too much at last for
her to bear.  Moira stepped away to the bedroom to undress and put on a
sleep-shirt; somewhat shorter than a nightgown, and lighter fabric.  With Leo
sleeping beside her – one wing over her more often than not, it seemed – the
nights weren't as cold, so she required less covering to be comfortable.

Leo's gaze was
quietly appreciative when she stepped back into the nest-bed and slid under the
sheets.  He pressed himself to her side and kissed her thoroughly.

“Mmmm... I
hadn't kissed you this evening yet, had I?”

He shook his
great head and looked at her with mock-pleading eyes.  She gave into him with a
chuckle, meeting his lips again.  His broad hand on her hip stayed chaste but
possessive.  Moira could feel her body wanting to yearn up into his... so she
broke away before it could betray her finally, letting the blush die on her
cheeks.

She told him
good night, still cordially, and rolled over to seek her sleep.  The comforting
weight of his palm lay on her shoulder blades.

Moira woke –
or thought she did, at first – laying in a green glade, somewhere temperate. 
The grass was as soft as silk under her flesh  The great arch of Leo's wing
sheltered her from the sun and he was sprawled beside her, watching her.

“You're naked,”
she said.  So was she, for that matter.

“Because I
wish to be,” he replied aloud.  How strange – his voice in this dream was as
low as she had imagined but not rough, not at all.  It was smooth and sweet, a
seductive voice.

“And why would
you wish to be naked with me?”

“Is that not
what lovers do?” Leo asked innocently.

“Ahhhh, but
we're not lovers.”

“No.  Not yet.”

He sidled
closer to her; the crushed grass under his shoulder smelled like mint and
eucalyptus.  A calming smell, although his nearness and nudity made her heart
beat faster.

“Would you like
to be?” he asked, trailing his fingers down her throat and over the curve of
her breast to cup it casually.

“You know the
answer to that.”

“I know many
things; knowing does not remove the joy of hearing them spoken.”

She felt her
breath hitch beneath his palm.

“Of course
I've wanted to be your lover.  Since almost the first moment I saw you.  Ever
since we first kissed, certainly.  But you pushed me away that time I tried.”

Leo moved to
half-cover her and kissed her lips, slow and full of promise.

“I can show
you how sorry I am for that, if you will let me, Moira.”

She loved the
feel of her name in his mouth, at last.  Her hands found his shoulders,
although whether to push him away or pull him closer she couldn't decide.  He
was moving anyway, kissing a line down her throat.

“Why should I?”
she managed.

“Because you
like sonnets... and your poor devoted angel has written one in your honor. 
Shall I tell it to you?”

His mouth
brushed across her nipple, then away.  He raised his face to await her reply.

“Say on,”
Moira commanded, curious and aroused at once.

“All through
the day, a pirate for the hive,” he began, voice hushed and inviting;

“Goes golden
bee to plunder ev’ry flower

And steal its
dust so that his queen may thrive.

No other
purpose tasks each waking hour.

Industrious
and tireless in flight –

Does lowly bee
e’er feel him some regret

To leave the
rose that wrapped him in her light?

Or does her
perfumed softness he forget?”

Leo lowered
his lips, kissing the curve of her breast before he continued, his eyes blazing
with longing.

“My hive’s
abandoned, lady, and no queen

Could reign
above the radiance of you –

So duty lost
to love, in choice between;

I cleave me to
the path the heart finds true.

With petals
tight, the bud embraced the bee –

My lady, will
you do no less for me?”

She slid her
hands into his steely mane and urged him up again for a proper kiss, to cover
her discomfiture.

“Does my
modest work please you?” he breathed.

“Yes, Leo...
with two minor quibbles.”

“On what
points?”

“All honey bees
you see gathering nectar are female; the males work only to mate, and then they
die.”

“Details!” he
growled, parting her thighs with his knee to lay between them.  “Although if
their queen was as lush and desirable as you, I could not blame them.  And on
what other item will you school me, my lady?”  He kissed along her collarbones,
eyebrows raised as he awaited her response.

“I am not your
lady.”

“I long to
make you so, in every possible sense of the words,” he answered.  “Mine...  My
own lady, my only lady.  Open to me, queen of my soul; be one with me.”

Her resistance
– never firm, no, not in the slightest, not to this man – melted in the face of
his tender words.  Only a dream, of course.  Grass like this didn't exist in
the real world.  This was an impossible place of the mind, made for trysting.

So she
answered him in the silence he had given her till now, gazing up at him with
unmistakable invitation.

“Oh, my love,”
he sighed; she enveloped him as he sank, an inch at a time.  “My rose, my sweetest
flower.  I would give all I possess, everything I am, if I could have you...”

But you do,
she wanted to protest – then thought and words were swept aside as he mated her
with a steady need, a hunger that boiled across her skin in waves from his
mind.  He was moving with purpose; he angled without mercy against that spot
that most pleased, the bee seeking and finding his nectar...

And Moira
woke, this time in truth.  The muscles in her crotch and thighs were clenching
in a good hard orgasm, almost to the point of pain.  She bit her lip and
squirmed against the sensation, twisting the covers around her. 

Just as it
began to fade, the pile of feathers that was Leo emitted a noise much like a
moan of agony.

“Leo?”

She stretched
out her arm towards him – and he struck, fast as a viper, hand encircling her
wrist in a firm grip.  He opened his wings enough for her to see his face.

Instantly she
was concerned, not for herself but for him.  He was panting and blank-eyed,
like a man so caught in a nightmare he has no realization he has awoken.  She
reached out to touch his cheek with her free hand; he flinched from the caress
and groaned aloud again, unthinking.  It was the sound of a warrior who had
taken a mortal wound.

Moira was
murmuring his name over and over, desperately trying to reach him, to wake him
back to himself.  He shuddered and pressed his face into his own pillow, then
shook his head.

“Leo, baby...
Leo... please, tell me what's wrong.”

He sighed and
let all his muscles relax, collapsing his wings again into a downy shroud,
releasing her hand.

“Sweetheart, I
think you had a bad dream, that's all.  A nightmare.”

I think we
both did,
she admitted privately.

“Please come
back out... it's okay.  We're awake now.”

He slid his
wing down, revealing himself almost to the shoulder; his eyes and face were
profoundly troubled.  She stroked his brow gently, trying to ease his distress.

“Was it a bad
nightmare?” Moira asked softly.

Leo nodded
seriously.  He brought his hands up to scrub at his face with some ferocity.

“But are you
okay now?  Will you be all right?”

He nodded
again and tried to smile.

“Okay, then...
I think I'm going to go ahead and get up and shower, now that I'm awake.”

She leaned
over and kissed his forehead, then crawled to the edge of the nest and stood
up.  Last night's water glass sufficed for the morning medicine; Leo seemed
unwilling to move, still curled up as much as he could, covered from neck down
by his wings.

The hot water
felt good on her naked flesh, although having the spray come from much higher
up took more than a little getting used to.  Whatever its cause – being awoken
by an orgasm was not the least pleasant way she could imagine to regain
consciousness.  She was temporarily satisfied, but not sated.

If she were in
a real relationship now... well.  She'd be making love, Moira was pretty sure. 
Assuming the man at her side hadn't woken from a nightmare that seemed as awful
as hers had been lovely.

No less a
nightmare for its loveliness, however.  Who wants to dream about enjoying what
they can't have?  Mmm.  Let it go, Moira.

The sun was
shockingly high when she stepped out of the bathroom, still toweling off.  It
might be worth it to go to the city today, if Leo was willing.  They could do
an early lunch, some place nice on the money he'd given her – enjoy what was
shaping up to be a clear November day.  Maybe buy a kite on the way home, to
fly in the empty fields that used to belong to her family.

She dressed
with care.  For much of her life being poor she'd disregarded or intentionally
ignored the silent language of clothing.  What does it matter what a blouse or
a dress or purposefully-chosen accessories can say to a stranger, when all your
belongings shout your poverty?

But as she'd
gotten away, into “the North” as her neighbors would call it, she'd found she
could subtly manipulate the people she met with what she wore and the attitude
it presented.  Careful purchases, both then and after her accident, made a
certain level of wardrobe possible.

After the
underwear today she chose an old pair of blue jeans, still dark but now soft as
suede after hundreds of Laundry Days.  They fit like a second skin in places. 
Over them, her one cashmere sweater in the wine-dark red that suited her.  Its
cut flattered her figure, with a sweetheart neckline and long sleeves.  Silver
drop-earrings and her good silver chain, on which a simple rectangular dichroic
glass pendant hung, shivering shades of blue and green.

Moira was even
able to bend and slide on her engineer boots and fasten them.  She
did
like the boots and she hardly ever went out where she could wear them – they
wouldn't fit in at the office.  From head to knee at least she was all softness
that begged to be touched, and that suited her.

She checked
herself again in the mirror, smiled, and turned to find Leo standing in the
doorway.  He too had changed, tucking away his wings and dressing in his black
pants and fitted shirt.  He gazed at her now, blue eyes affectionate.

“You look
good,” she told him.  He gestured to encompass all of her and smiled, returning
the compliment.

Then he held
up a black hair-tie and cocked an eyebrow.

“You just want
your hair brushed; you can't fool me, you great cherub,” Moira told him
cheekily.  He shrugged and knelt on the kitchen floor again as she got the
brush.

“I do like
your wings,” she admitted as she stepped up to his broad shoulders, “but I like
being able to get this close to you, too.  Don't you ever wish you could sleep
on your back?”

He let his
head loll forward and did a credible imitation of a snore.

“Okay, point
taken,” she giggled.

God, what was
it about this man's hair?  She let it flow through her fingers again, clenching
and relaxing her grip to sport with it: sleek steel cables, warm with his body
heat.  Moira just about could have played with his hair all day if he would let
her.  She'd never thought grey hair was sexy, before she met him.

Well.  She
never realized she could have a wing fetish, either...

He leaned back
into her touch, exhaling in bliss at the stroke of the brush bristles over his
scalp.  No wonder Sampson could be so easily subdued...  She’d play his
Delilah, all right, but never would she have cut these sterling locks, not when
all that strength lay in her palm like the reins of a chariot.

She sighed and
made herself complete his low pony-tail; he pulled her gently in front of him
and let her expression show him, better than a mirror, how he looked.

“Lovely. 
Absolutely perfect.”  No longer the gym teacher; this was a bodybuilder who had
covered up for a day around town among the average people.  With his hair back
he looked the very picture of controlled power.

Leo slid his
hands along her sides, smiling in delight at the sensation of the sweater, then
let them lace together behind her back and draw her in for a kiss.

For a moment
she remembered the scent of the grass, the warmth of his body, the shelter of
his wing.

Then she
slowly pulled away, stroking her thumbs along the creases at the corners of his
eyes.  “Lovely,” she said again.  “Let's go walk the world, shall we, dear?”

A minute later
Leo slid in to his side of the car, where the seat was still pushed back to
accommodate him.  “I figured we could go to the city where I work,” she said. 
“There's a nice little bakery and bistro there; they do brunch.  It's expensive
but not too frou-frou... we can get away with what we're wearing.”

Leo seemed
agreeable, although the look in his eyes said he'd go to the moon with her for
breakfast if she required it.  Moira was beginning to dwell on the thought of
lemon tarts – one of her managers several years back liked to take people out
to lunch on their birthday and that's how she had experienced La Maupin's. 
Nice guy.  Hadn't lasted long in her office, of course.  None of the nice ones
did.

Her little car
trundled down the long dirt driveway, then up onto the old grey asphalt of the
road.  Leo's black-clad thigh lay just inches from where her hand rested on the
center console; she wondered what he'd do if she moved her palm to it instead.