Sentinel of Heaven (30 page)

The item lists
were as bad or worse, however.  The personal effects had all come from the
onsite barracks area and from description alone many of them would have made Ed
Gein blush with envy.  Someone was learning leather-work; amid his tools and practice
pieces was a tanned hide over a foot square that included a nipple and a tattoo
written in Arabic.

Preserved
ears.  Eyeballs in jars.  Hundreds of gold teeth, fillings, earrings, wedding
rings.  More than one set each of male and female genitalia; preservation
methods differed.  Fingers, some of them very small.  The top of a skull, cut
off and cleaned, that apparently served as a dice bowl.

But it was
less difficult to deal with most of these ideas; easier to believe that they'd
been scavenged from corpses, and the dead are beyond pain.

Worse were the
souvenirs taken while the victims were alive – the photographs that they
had
not
sent her.  Photographs that could never be sent, and would only be
buried in some secure archives far away because they were too important to be
burned.  On these the records grew even more distant and clinical... and when
even a clinical description would be too graphic, too horrible, too
unforgivable (should that information fall into the media's hands) they left it
all unsaid with only one word:

CLASSIFIED.

Oh, but the
imagination could fill in the blanks, and Moira's sure as hell tried despite
her every wish otherwise.

“Photo
B368-Z744: Young female in black long sleeves and black skirt, desert background.”

'Young female'
could have been any age between six to twenty-six; it wasn't indicated.

“Photo
B368-Z745: Young female in black long sleeves, close-up of face and torso, male
arm and hand visible on right side.”

“Photo
B368-Z746: Young female in black long sleeves sitting on sand, erect human
penis visible on left side.”

Important
qualification here; not every erect penis described in these pictures was
human.

“Photo
B368-Z747: CLASSIFIED.”

“Photo
B368-Z748: CLASSIFIED.”

“Photo
B368-Z749: CLASSIFIED.”

“Photo
B368-Z750: Young female, no shirt, one breast excised, skirt raised to hips,
laying on sand, deceased.”

The first
series of these Moira had read she locked herself in a bathroom stall for
twenty minutes after, shaking and trying not to puke.

Then she went
back to her desk and over the next three days forced herself to finish reading
them all.

Yes, Mr.
White.  I do understand now.

B368 appeared
to only collect photographs of his acts, no other souvenirs.  But oh, what a
devoted little shutterbug he was.  Not just women or girls – “young men”
featured in his work as well, although he seemed to have a type.  “Slender
young man”.  “Curly-haired young man”.  “Blonde young man”.  She saw those
words repeated often.

He was brutal
to the females of course but the torment of the men was something personal,
something very special to B368.

The worst was
a “slender young man” that had apparently survived over the course of a
record-breaking twenty-eight photos, over three-fourths of them “CLASSIFIED”. 
In half of the rest, a bolt-cutter and a blow-torch were referenced.

Moira hadn't
slept at all the weekend after she finished the litany of B368's magnum opus;
she'd checked the locks on the doors and windows every hour, powerless to stop
herself.

She returned
to work the following Monday and hammered the books, driving herself
mercilessly.  She went home that night and slept the sleep of the just.  Back
to work the next day and more of the same.

That case
owned her soul until the very instant where she knew she'd given all she
could.  She'd taken every single sickening morsel they'd handed her and milked it
for all the meaning it would surrender.  All except a page from Revelations, on
which three lines were written – the only thing she’d kept when all else had
been shredded just as the government had ordered.  Kept, and tried to forget.

And when the
investigation was complete she got permission to take two year's vacation back
to back – four whole weeks out of the office, where she lay on a beach towel in
the sun on her back porch all day and reread the classics of her childhood, the
ones that were harmless and pretty.  Little Women.  The Secret Garden.  Little
House on the Prairie.  Swiss Family Robinson.  Through the Looking Glass.  King
of the Wind.  The Princess Bride.

Pretty books,
from the moment she rose in the morning until the moment she went to sleep at
night, until at last the memory of that dangling foot faded somewhat.  Until at
last she forgot the litany of B368's hideous work.

Moira in the
here and now blinked hard and cleared her vision, feeling for a moment as if
her face passed through Medusa's.  The road was open before her; the road that
led home.

I can't do
that now, she realized.  I have someone at home that waits for me.  More than
that – he can read emotion.

I cannot
carry this filth in my head to where he could find it.  What happens at work
has to stay there.  No right-thinking or right-feeling man could know specifics
about an evil like this, like Molon Labe, and not shake with rage.  Not want to
rush to stop it, if he felt like he was capable of doing so.

Especially
not a man like Leo.  Millions of lives and oceans of blood, he said he’d shed –
what were a few more, to clear such a blot from the earth?

I cannot
and will not let him get involved.

Having made
her decision, she didn't agonize.  She didn't try to convince herself.  She
thought instead about where she was, who she was, what she was doing.

My name is
Moira.  I am driving a car.  I am on the interstate.  It is late November.  My
feet are cold.  I will turn on the heat in the car.  There are trees beside
this overpass.  It is not raining now.

My name is
Moira and I am going home.  My lover Leo is there.  Leo is an angel.  Leo is
very tall.  Leo has silver hair and blue eyes.

I love
Leo.  Leo loves me.

My name is
Moira and I am happy.  I am driving home.  I turn left on this road and go
another fifteen miles.  The sun is coming out, even though it's nearly sunset.

My name is
Moira.  I'm going home to be with my angel Leo, who I love.

She smiled. 
She let her thoughts be empty.  And when she turned into her driveway and
looked up to her back porch, there was her shining beacon, Leo – grinning to
meet her gaze.

He had a book
in his hands.  He waited until she'd opened her car door to get out before he
bent over it and read aloud:

“If you were
queen of pleasure,

And I were
king of pain,

We'd hunt down
love together,

Pluck out his
flying-feather,

And teach his
feet a measure,

And find his
mouth a rein;

If you were
queen of pleasure,

And I were
king of pain.”

“You
are
my highest pleasure,” she laughed up at him.

“And you, my
lady, my most joyful pain.”  Leo closed the book.  “I made a picnic for us, if
you would like.  I was thinking we could fly a kite in the field since it
stopped raining.”

“Won't it be
night soon?”

He smiled the
smile she loved.  “Would you let so small a thing stop us?”

“I have
finished the floor in the reading room,” he said earnestly, taking her bags
into his hands for only an instant before they vanished back into the house,
presumably.

“How come
sometimes when you do that it makes a noise and sometimes it doesn't?” Moira
lay her hand in his proffered palm, accepting his assistance in standing up out
of the driver's seat.

“The method
differs, my love.  For the things in my line of sight or within a certain
distance – if I know how they lie – I can draw them through the intervening
space out of phase with this dimension.  Still present in some ways but
non-interactive.  It does not displace the air as much.”

He held out
his other arm and the old quilt folded itself over his forearm, with an old
wicker basket appearing in his hand, all silently.

“However, to
create matter or to transport it long distances... involves a mastery of wing
power.”  His face looked wry, almost embarrassed.  “Some angels can do it
without displacing the air and causing noise; I cannot quite work the trick of
it.”

She grinned.  “Leo
is admitting a short-fall in his abilities, at last?”

He led her
hand in hand across the grass toward the tree line.  “Sadly one of many, my
lady.”

She followed
him on the path through her little back yard forest, squeezing between the wet
pines.  The grass and mud squelched under Moira's shoes.

“Will it still
be too damp for us to put the blanket down?” she asked as they reached the
clearing on the other side.

“My lady of
thirteen hundred and fifty questions, please – trust your angel,” Leo replied
with a rueful glance.

He handed her
the quilt and the basket with a kiss, motioning for her to stay as he walked a
few paces ahead.

Then the dead
grass around his ankles began to steam, a wave working itself from his body for
a radius about as far as he was tall.  When he was done a nicely-sized circle
of ground was bone-dry, more than sufficient for the blanket.

Leo helped her
unfold it and lay it out, stepping onto its surface with suspiciously clean
feet while she left her muddy shoes off to the side.  His grey pants were still
high on his calves; she should have him “stretch” them so they fit correctly,
at some point.

“You don't
bother washing your pants any more, do you?” Moira observed.  “You just return
them to the time they were clean.”

“Easy enough
to do, as my faculties increase each day,” Leo shrugged.  “Today I also did the
same for your garments.”

“No Laundry
Day this weekend?”  Her delight was palpable. 

“None needed,
no.  Someday it may be more convenient to wash them physically but since my
powers are not yet required in other ways I can spend them as I wish.”

His wings tilted
themselves in the rays of the setting sun; she wished for a fleeting moment
that she could hear the music of its light again.  Then Leo pulled the
tea-towel draped over the top of the basket away and Moira's attention went
elsewhere.

Chicken wraps
with pesto and provolone; an assortment of raw veggies and an absolutely
delicious ranch dressing for dipping; portobello mushroom caps that had been
hollowed and filled with some sort of savory crab salad – all fairly light
foods, finger foods.  He kept pulling dishes from the basket like a
never-ending magic trick.

“Leo!  I can't
eat all of this by myself!”

“I may help,
modestly,” he said, picking up one of the portobello cups, holding his other
hand beneath it as a plate.

“Still, won't
the rest go to waste?”

“No, Moira – I
will return the remains to composite elements and store for later use.”  He bit
the cup in half and chewed slowly with his customary enjoyment, then
swallowed.  “Will my lady not eat?”

She picked up
a wrap and took a bite; it was as good as she'd hoped.  Moira found herself
surprisingly hungry.  Perhaps the stresses and exertions of the day had
sharpened her appetite.

“You're going
to make me fat, with all this marvelous food.”

Leo cocked an
eyebrow and looked her up and down suggestively.

“I'll work it
back off ya,” he drawled, and grinned at her giggle.  “Save a lil' room for
dessert.”

“Do you mean
dessert or,” and here she lowered her voice and waggled her brows lasciviously,
“... 'dessert'?”

“I mean lemon
tarts, ma'am – and you think
I'm
insatiable?”

“Just wanting
to be sure I understood you rightly; and if they are La Maupin's tarts they're
as good or better than sex anyway.”

She chuckled
at his mock-hurt expression and stuck her tongue out at him.  When he dropped
his gaze to choose another morsel she found herself staring at him,
overwhelmed.

Oh,
angel.  I've got it so bad for you.

Leo looked up
again and caught her blushing.

“We should
have a glass of wine with our picnic,” Moira said.

“Will the
cherry wine in the house do?”

“Quite well!”

He summoned it
and two of her glass tumblers, pouring for both of them. 

Moira raised
the glass he put into her hand.  “To us,” she said softly.  He smiled and
clinked his tumbler amiably to hers, watching her drink from beneath his
lashes.

Just as the
sun set he pulled out a plate and fork for each of them, a lemon tart apiece
from the endless depths of the basket.  He reclined on his side on the blanket
to indulge in his, flipping his wings back tightly.

“How did you
know that I'd wanted to fly a kite out here?” she asked after the first bite
had been savored and swallowed.

“You pictured
it when you showed this field to me.  I tried not to hear it... but sometimes
you imagine very loudly.”

“Is it a
bother, baby?”

“No, not to
me; but if we have occasion to be around more celestials you may want to learn
how to shield yourself.  I can teach you.”

“Think they
might get an unexpected 'earful'?”

“I am certain
of it,” he answered emphatically.

They ate their
desserts in silence, trading glances back and forth.  Moira thought he seemed
almost ill at ease, as if he held some secret he needed to share but wasn't
sure how.

In his own
time,
she mused. 
We all have our secrets.

Leo finished
his tart in what must be a record speed for him, downing his wine after it in
one reckless gulp.

“A kite,” he
said, and reached into the fold of his wing – drawing out a hand-made creation
of silk and balsa wood, painted on the front and shaped to represent a large
white owl with spread wings.  The stabilizing tail was blue and green and
silver strips of silk rags.

“Oh!” Moira
exclaimed, clapping her hands in surprise and delight.  “I've never seen one
like that before!”

“I saw a man
flying one like this in China, five hundred years ago.  I always wondered what
it would be like to fly it myself.”

“I didn't
suggest it, that day... I didn't know if you'd be comfortable seeing something
fly, when you couldn't yet.” 

“It does not
fly as I do,” he answered, and with that mysterious declaration he stood up and
dropped the spindle of strong linen thread by her feet.  “Pay out the line, my
lady – I shall take it up to where the wind blows.”

She popped the
last bite in her mouth and grabbed the string as he bid, turning the spindle to
give him slack to walk away down the gentle slope of the field.  Moira supposed
he would run with it to get it the height it needed – she certainly wasn't
capable of doing so.  Not much would be required, however; she could see the
tips of the trees blowing back and forth in the twilight.

He walked
until he was a softly glowing spot a hundred feet or so away, then turned to
face in her direction.  She couldn't read his expression in the gloom but
waited patiently for him to jog into the wind, carrying the kite to help it
take off.

He stepped
backwards instead, once.  And again, and again, facing her but moving away in
the dark, the kite perched on his lifted fist.

Her first real
clue was the fact that the line went taut in her hand.  Unthinking, she raveled
out a few more feet and watched it pull tight again.

Then she
looked up at Leo, still walking backwards in the night, wings cupped and tilted
now to face the earth.  The line grew tight again and she realized – he was
moving upward into the air away from her, as if he were the kite at the end of
the line.

Leo was
flying, his starry wings utterly still and silent, bearing the kite aloft.

He didn’t fly
as the kite flew, no, nor did he fly as a bird would – he hovered without
effort, hanging suspended and calm in the chill of the evening.

Moira gaped;
her heart did a painful double-hammer of fear and excitement.  The spindle
slipped from her hand and landed forgotten in the grass as she pushed herself
unsteadily to her feet.

Still watching
her from his distant height Leo shone down on her, a greater star among the
lesser ones. 
Don't go
, she wanted to say. 
Don't leave me,
please.
  She couldn't let the words pass her lips.

At that
altitude she could see his hair being blown by the breeze .  He turned and
released the kite from his hand, passing the line through a loose grip as he
floated down again, wings never stirring, never beating.

His feet
touched the earth a dozen yards from her where he stood watching her
wordlessly, the distant kite still tethered to his fist.  She realized her
hands had twisted into an anxious knot at her chest but couldn't figure out how
to part them.

“My love,” he
called.  “You nearly lost your kite.”

Then her
paralysis broke and she was hobbling towards him through the slushy November
mud in her sock-feet, her cane forgotten behind her, desperate to fall into the
arms he spread to catch her.  His hands were gentle on her shoulder, in her
hair, soothing her as she clung to him.  She could hear the rhythm of the wind
on the kite high above them.

“You flew,
baby,” Moira croaked against his chest, blinded by unshed tears.  “You flew.”

“I remembered
how, today.  After I took you back to your place of work.”

“Why didn't
you tell me?”

“I knew not
how you would take it.”

She smiled and
bit her lip, laughing and crying noiselessly.  He stroked her cheek.

“Can you make
another one... another kite?  Some other day?”

“Of course, my
lady – but why?”

“Set this one
free, then.  Let the sky have its sacrifice tonight.”

He touched the
turmoil in her mind, sampling the atavistic fear roiling in her heart – only
one or the other could return after both had tread upon the air.  With a nod he
severed the string high above their heads; the silk owl was caught up by the
night breeze then and flung far to perhaps travel miles and come down hours
away, like a strange wordless warning from the gods.

Leo gathered
her up in his strong arms and let her keep a tight hold of his neck, tidying up
all else with his power and bending to pick up her cane, bearing her home.

He asked for
no reasons, requested no explanation.  Moira realized that Heaven's greatest
gift to her in this life might be a man who realized both the use of words and
the worth of their absence.  He undressed them both in the dark, never leaving
her alone, pulling her down in the bed to wrap her in his light and in the
silent enduring promise of his devotion.

Moira slept,
lulled by the quiet rhythm of his breath and comforted by his cinnamon scent
all around her.

She was roused
around midnight by the feel of Leo's fingertips caressing her face.  The room was
dark, save for the sparkle of his feathers in their night-time glow.  Outside
the rain was falling against the windows, the only noise a soft susurration.

“My lady,” he
asked, his voice lower than usual and unexpectedly husky.  “Do you wake?”

“I do now,
baby.  What is it?  What do you need?” 

He nuzzled her
throat as she yawned.

“Naught but
you... and your consent.”  Leo opened the bond a little ways for her to see the
physical and emotional craving that had interrupted his own rest.

“You have it,”
she answered mildly, eyebrows raised.

Leo moved to
cover her entirely with the warm weight of his body and claimed her lips,
kissing her deeply.  He woke her flesh with his powers, mindful and cautious,
taking his time as he advanced until he rested fully inside her.

Indolently
Moira opened their connection fully in order to taste the fire in his veins. 
She felt him smile in the dark and kiss the top of her head, thighs flexing as
he eased out an inch or two and sank again.  “It is my belief,” he murmured, “that
I was fashioned to bring you joy, and you the same for me.”

“You were made
for me, so many years before I was born?” she managed, letting his desire
become hers although she made no move to goad him on.  It was sexy to let him
love her because he wanted it, to give him a selfish moment with it.

“A bar of iron
five thousand years old will still cleave to the magnet made yesterday, my
lady,” he responded, “and that is all I wish to speak for a while, please you.”

“As my lord
commands,” she answered, a felt a chuckle ripple through him that faded into a
sigh.  He raised her to him in arms that felt like steel, crossed under her
back and gripping her shoulders.

Moira watched
him, cradling him in body and mind.  The fatigue in him (for he did require
sleep, although not as much as a human would)  warred with the mindless tide of
lust, still threaded like a bolt of tartan fabric with tendrils of desire and
tenderness.

She idly
wondered how often he'd woken like this across his centuries, half-mad with the
urge – and was surprised when he answered wordlessly: not often.  Not very
often at all.  So rarely in fact that tonight's provoking passion shocked him
with its ferocious strength, its blind tenacity.