Sentinel of Heaven (35 page)

His voice
faded away and he turned his eyes towards the stars again.  “I feel it
returning,” he murmured.  “My own memories, my full faculties... coming for me,
coming back to me.  It will be tonight, my love.  When I am once again in
possession of my complete might and wisdom, Hell's foundations will tremble –
and none will ever seek to harm my mate and hope to live.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes, my
treasured one.”

Moira snuggled
against his bare chest.  “Will you still be my Leo?”

His hand was
gentle on her cheek.  “I will always be.  Forever and ever and ever.”

She sighed.  The
silence stretched in the endless hiss and crash of the waves along the shore. 
He reached into the curve of his wing.

“Here,” he
said, “for the removal of your mask?”  In his hand was a moistened makeup wipe
of the same kind she had in her bathroom.

“Yes, thank
you,” and with his help she wiped away all her war-paint, leaving her face
naked again.

“Now there is
my woman,” he whispered when the task was done.

They watched
the stars together for a long while.  When Leo spoke again his voice was low
and contemplative.

“There is a
phrase in the language of my kind: 'returning to Provenance'. It means going
home; Provenance is the home plane of celestial beings like myself.

“But it is
also sometimes used euphemistically, because there is a part of Provenance that
no entity can go into and still come out at will – we call it the High
Provenance.

“So to say
'returning to Provenance'... sometimes it means to die a true death, the
soul-death.  We do not know if it is the end or only a transition, although
each has their own beliefs, and in my memories may hide a better understanding.

“It means...
to dissolve, to change, to become one with something larger than the self.”

Leo met her
eyes and smiled, filled with serenity.

“Moira – in
you, in body, mind, and soul, I have the infinite.  To unite with you on any
plane is to understand that peace, even if just for a moment.  To return to Provenance. 
You are my home.”

She smiled at
the romantic nature of the thought... and her stomach rumbled.  The angel
laughed aloud.

“Now she
hungers!”  Leo shifted her to sit onto the rock in front of him and drew a
picnic from his feathered portals again.  He watched in simple pleasure as she
ate, and there were no questions for a while.

“Sit here with
me until the sun rises, my love; let us see what returns to both of us.”

“It's already
begun,” Moira answered grimly, “or at least I remember what I was working on
previous to today.  The Collectors.”

He flipped his
wings back tightly and watched her face as she began her tale in much greater
detail than she’d told at her performance review.  When Moira got to today's
events she continued seamlessly, only realizing once she looked up into his
eyes that he was managing her emotions, wiping away the panic before it could
even begin.

She told him
about Molon Labe Staffing.  He nodded silently.

Then she
remembered the awful things Erica had said, and climbed back into the angel's
lap for the comfort of his arms.  “They know about you.  They've seen you – I
don't know how, but they have.  We can't ever go home again.”

“You are
mostly correct... you cannot go back, but I must.  Once.  Your laptop bag is
where we left it and it must be retrieved.”

“Why?  We
can't do anything about this, Leo – Angela was right, the Collectors have a
million pawns.”

“Not Angela,
my lady.  Not a human woman.  That piece of the code was hidden in plain sight.” 
His craggy face was set.  “If my dawning thought is correct... then I too have
sought the Collectors across centuries.  They are the shadow group that jail my
lost brothers – the Taken Ones.”

He set her
quickly but gently on the rock.  “We must move with haste; it may already be
too late.  I shall return in one moment.”

Leo vanished
soundlessly, leaving Moira alone in the grey light of false dawn.  Minutes
stretched on and the thought occurred to her: she had no idea where this
completely uninhabited island was in the world.  She didn't even know if it had
a source of fresh water, or any obtainable food, or a way back to
civilization.  She had no weapons, no tools at all; her sturdy white ash had
been put away in Leo's wing over ‘lunch’.

If he didn't
come back... things would end badly for her.  Badly, but probably not very quickly.

Then the air
fifty feet out over the sea exploded – a fireball from out of nowhere that
roared in rage and pain as it flung itself down into the waves.

“Leo!” she
cried, shoving to her feet and stumbling towards the crashing surf that pushed
him shoreward, her fears forgotten in favor of new concerns.  Thankfully he was
surfacing already, the flames doused.  He raised his massive wings out of the
water and snarled – using his power to reverse the charred damage until they
were pristine, but the cost of pain was written on his face.

“I am a fool!”
he thundered, closing the distance between them.

“What
happened?  Were they there?”

“No, my lady –
but they left a charming toy!”  Leo bit off the words, bellicose in his ire.  “The
house had been ransacked, I saw when I emerged there... but I still held a hope
that your research had been overlooked.  I reintegrated fully into this
dimension to search the wreckage and as soon as my weight touched the floor...”

He sighed and
shook his dripping hair out of his eyes, gazing at her in sorrow.  “Only my
swift reaction saved me – that explosion was meant to kill you and maim me
enough for capture.  The house is utterly destroyed, my love.  I am sorry.”

Moira raised
her chin; some pain strikes too large and too quick for tears.  She knew she'd
mourn it, and soon – all his effort, all the beauty he'd wrought to make a home
out of what had been her living tomb – but that time was not now, not yet.

“Gone too is
my hope, that something in your work would have been the key to help me find my
–”  The angel faltered, sinking to his knees in the sea foam, his pupils
narrowing to pinpricks.

“My brothers!”
Leo gasped.  He flinched as if struck, a gout of bright red blood bursting from
his nose before he keeled over face down in the sand.

Moira called
his name fruitlessly, throwing all her weight against his near shoulder, trying
to find a solid footing in the shifting sand.  She felt her bad knee creak, then
pop in a flash of agony.  Without him conscious to take the pain from her the
sensation was blindingly intense, although she didn't hear her own hoarse
scream in her frenzied state.  When her vision cleared she saw her sacrifice
had been enough, however – he was shoved onto his side where he would not
suffocate or drown while unconscious.

His eyes were
rolled so far back only the whites were visible.  Moira ripped her sleeve apart
and pulled it free of her blouse, dipping it in the salt water to clean his
face of the blood and sand, dragging her ravaged body over to prop his head up
on her thigh, murmuring his name.

“Moira,” he
breathed at last, what felt like hours later. 

He gazed up
the length of her body, focusing with effort on her face.  The sun was rising;
the horizon dyed red.

“I remember
everything.”  His eyes were filled with an unworldly pain that made her current
physical hurt seem trivial.  “I know too now, what happened to my brothers and
where they are.  They screamed to me in their anguish, in one voice – the stab
of their torment unlocked my memory entire.”

He pushed
himself away from her to crouch in the sand a few feet away, just out of
reach.  “Contemptible horrors,” he groaned.  “Terrible maimings... abominable
torture beyond what the sane mind can contemplate or countenance.  Evil
committed and offensive given, the likes of which has not been seen in Provenance
since the end of the Great War!”

He coughed
beneath his veiling mane, a distressing sawing sound – Moira realized that he
was trying not to retch.

“Oh God,” she
breathed, stretching a hand towards her mate, her heart flooded with despair.

“No!” he
cried, scuttling back.  “Touch me not, with my head full of this filth!”

But still she
came, on her hands and her goodish knee, falling into the arms he moved
reflexively to catch her.

“I must go to
them,” he whispered.

“You'll do
nothing without a plan.”

“What?”

“Leo, listen
to me – this has been done on purpose.  You saw what they did to me today; they
laid the trap and I just barely escaped it.  But my escape was used to bait
yours.  Stay with me.  Clear your mind.  It's going to be hard because this
trap was designed for
you
.  If you're right they've had centuries to
get good at kidnapping angels.

“When they
didn't get me, they at least got you out of the house – I bet they were still
watching it.  They knew the minute you weren't there anymore.  They came in and
ransacked it and booby-trapped it.  And they knew the instant it exploded, too.”

She held his
face between her hands, forcing him to meet her eyes in the dawn light.

“They expected
you to live through it – you said as much!  But hurt and maimed and traumatized
if they'd managed to kill me with it.  Then not five minutes later, the angels
you've spent eons searching for are screaming for you and you can suddenly hear
them?

“This is the
biggest trap of all.  They mean for you to blunder into it, damaged and
heart-sick and reeling.”

“That does not
change the fact – my brothers have called and I must go.”

“And you will
go:  with a plan.  And with me.”

“You will
not.  It is certain death.”

“You can't
stop me.”

“I can vanish,”
he said, clenching his jaw.

“I will
follow,” she promised.

“How?”

She shifted
and reached into her back pocket, pulling out her sand-spattered wallet.  “With
your feather.”

He gaped at
her.  “How do you...”

“I didn't
until now, not for sure; but thanks for confirming it.  Your wings are portals,
Leo – manipulated by your will.  Your discarded feathers retain some of their
characteristics.  This one opened a portal for our minds to reach across the
miles and talk while I was at work because that’s all I ever asked of it. I'll
bet it's got enough magic left to send me on a journey after you.  We can hope
so, right?  Otherwise it'll lose me somewhere between here and there, or just
rip me apart in transit.”

She slipped
her wallet back in her pants.  He stared hard at her.

“And if you
fight me to take it from me now, you can consider this relationship over. 
You're not going to man-handle me in some misguided attempt to protect me
against my will.”

Leo groaned in
frustration.  “I am a fool, mated to a bigger fool.”

Then he cried
out again, clenching his arms around her and panting in agony.  “Gabriel?” he
managed.  Moira waited, feeling him poised to listen despite the obvious
suffering it caused him.

“Ahhh,” he
grieved as the paroxysm eased, leaning his head against hers.  “A last message
from my nest-mate... with more information than before.  He knew I would follow
their cry and he warns me with knowledge of the enemy's plan, and a vision of
how they are captive.  They cannot be saved, and in attempting to free them I
would be doomed to their fate.

“All is lost.”

“To hell with
that!” Moira growled at the defeat she heard in his voice.  She stopped his
mouth with a kiss and flung open the gates between their minds, acting on
instinct and desperation alone, feeding all her dwindling energy into the white
light at her core and pushing it towards him – a cleansing flame that burned
cold.  It ignited his soul in answer with a firestorm that boiled away the
turmoil, restoring him to absolute clarity.

She held it as
long as she could and as she crumpled, entirely drained, he caught her again
and poured the light back into her – the sunrise music drawn straight from his
wings!

“My love, you
wake me into being,” he said, his voice resplendent in power, more resonant
than she'd ever heard it.  “I am become myself once more.”

“Leo?”

“I am your Leo
and always will be,” said the winged man who rose to his feet with her in his
arms, “but that is only part of what I am...”

He set her
down on the rock again and pushed his hair back from his face, sinking to kneel
before her.  Yes, those were Leo's blue eyes – but something more, now fully
aware and calculating.

“You say you
will go with me.”  It was not a question.

“Yes.”

“Then you will
do so under my command.”

She squared
her chin and nodded.

He put his
hands to her bad knee.  “Brace,” he instructed.  “This will hurt –”  A
bone-crushing agony filled that limb as he reversed time for it to an hour ago,
when it had not yet been destroyed.  All the pain of that new injury and the
torment it had felt since fell on Moira's shoulders in an instant; her scream
echoed from the distant palm trees.

“Stand,” he
ordered, pulling her cane from his wing and passing it into her shaking hand.

Moira
swallowed back her tears.  “If you think I'm going to wuss out at this point
just because you're being cold to me,” she panted as she hauled herself to her
feet, “you've got another 'think' coming.”

“I have no
such thought.  There is a time for softness.  There has been that time, and
will be again, if Provenance wills.”  Something flashed in his eyes and was
gone.  “Until then we have need of your steel, your strength, for as long as it
may hold out.”

“Try me.”

The being
nodded.  “You will be tried.  You will indeed be.”