Sentinel of Heaven (40 page)

“All warriors
have them.”

Leo opened the
rapport between them completely and bathed her soul in the warmth of his
approval; for the first time since they'd arrived on the beach she felt her
tension begin to ease.  He lay one of his great wings over the collection of
plastic and steel and she knew he was saving them away somewhere only he could
reach them – remnants of her life that still held meaning for him.

“Gabriel,” he
was murmuring, “you have my thanks for this – but my lady requires rest.”

The sea-green
eyes moved from Leo's face to hers.  “What would you have me do now?” he asked,
lost-sounding.  Gabriel held her gaze, even as Leo answered.

“Go home. 
Return to Provenance.  Repair and restore yourself.  Be a herald to those not
yet allowed on this plane, tell them I will return shortly and all will be explained. 
You and I will speak more soon, on many things.  I will summon you.”

The other
angel opened his mouth as if to reply, then shut it and nodded dumbly.  Moira
reached across and put her hand on his shoulder.  At that particular contact
both of them were reminded uneasily of the trap, of her mission of mercy – she
could see it in his eyes.

“You have my
thanks as well,” she managed through her fatigue and the raw jangle of her
emotions.  “And I owe you as much as you owe me.  Life and freedom.”

He lifted her
hand from his body and kissed it briefly before allowing it to fall away.  “My
pleasure to serve, my lady.”

He vanished
between one heartbeat and the next.

The sun was
well up and Moira was dizzy under it; Leo held his wings up to shelter her from
its heat and fed her sips of its music, restoring some of her energy.

“You don't
fear that now.”

“No, my dearest
one – I am in full control of myself and all of my memories; I know to the
smallest increment how much your body and mind can take.”  She heard his voice
roughen.  Now they were alone at last...

She turned her
head to meet his eyes; they were a dwindling rind of sky-blue around great dark
pupils.

“Prove it,”
she whispered.

In the next
moment he was carrying her effortlessly into the trees away from the beach,
into the shade where the light could not find them.  A blanket from somewhere
pulled itself from his wings with a pop and spread in the soft hollow between
the closest trunks where he lay her down and they took each other, first in a
desperate savagery and then languid and slow, replete with desire – as if they
were the only lovers left alive in the world.

“Ithuriel,”
Moira breathed, watching his sleeping face.  It was hours later and she had
napped some herself – or rather, had fallen into blissful unconsciousness once
they'd wrung each other out completely, disengaging just enough to lay in a
close embrace.  The slivers of sky she could see through the palms were the
color of late afternoon.

He opened his
eyes.  “I did mean what I said,” he yawned.  “For you when we are alone, I can
always be 'Leo'.”

“I like the
name.  It has a good feel to it.  Don't you like it?”

“The eons have
worn out the novelty of it; I like it well enough, if I bother to think of it. 
But 'Leo'... that is a name just yours and mine; disconnected from my history. 
It killed only once, and it never destroyed.  It never waited in solitude of
the soul.  It only loved.”

She wove her
fingers with his.  “Ithuriel may also love.”

“And he does,
doubt it not – Leo did it in innocence, that is all.”

“Then continue
to do it in knowing, because I have questions.”

He laughed.  “My
lady of fifteen hundred of them, could I ever expect otherwise?  Still, I
suppose it is time for the answers.”

The angel
tipped her chin up for a kiss, then nuzzled her cheek, gathering his thoughts.

“To
understand... I must go back and explain what the angelic race is to humans,
because our purposes are united and our fates entwined.  Every time a human
dies, an angel is present – usually nearby in phase-space, hidden, invisible. 
Our duty at these occurrences is to accept the balance of the soul into a place
inside ourselves and bear all of it back to Provenance.”

“Every time? 
Why so?”

“All living
things return to Provenance, mortals and celestials alike.  Celestials are
fashioned so that we can go from the physical world to the spiritual plane and
back again; humans only go upon death, carried there by an angel.  The purpose
is to return the soul to the High Provenance, who can purify it and send it
back to Earth to be born again, in a cycle of improvement.”

“Oh.”  No
seeing his home, then.  A fish and a bird together, but either can hold their
breath only for so long...  “What happens at the end of the cycle?”

“I do not know,
my love.  The High Provenance has not told me.  Time passes differently on the
Provenance-plane, however; we know in advance what deaths we shall attend, and
when they arrive we are
sent
– irresistibly pulled to the mortal realm
and placed near our goal.  All angels serve this duty, although as one's status
gets higher the task is less frequent in favor of other obligations.  Myself as
Lord Commander attended mortal death once a month or so, and with certain
rights of position.

“One of them
being that I could choose which deaths I wished to attend.”

“And you chose
mine?”

He nodded, and
a pink flush lit the tops of his cheeks.  “I collected them.  Unusual natural
deaths.”

She stared.

“I told you. 
Hobbies, over the centuries.”  Leo raked his fingers through his tarnished
mane.  “Macabre it may be, but true.  You were to be hit by a meteor; that
happens quite rarely.”

“Okay, so you
chose to attend my unnatural natural death.”

“Yes... and on
the night of the Leonids, I was drawn into place outside your house.  In phase-space,
of course – with two exceptions no angel had come into the corporeal world in
four hundred years.”

He exhaled
slowly, his eyes distant as he searched his memory.

“The Taken
Ones.  The Great War was finally over by that time, although pockets of
resistance remained.  That is how I missed the loss of the first one: 
Makatiel, the one who did not return after you sent him.  His Writ must have
been damaged beyond repair by his years of torment; may Provenance give him
peace.

“The
Adversaries had gotten very clever in the war, and had begun to do as you saw. 
They knew that wingless angels could not be returned and could not be killed by
most means – even a celestial body torn into composite atoms would still seek
to draw together and heal itself across millions of years, although by the time
it reached any level of form the soul would be helplessly insane and still
could not return home.  Our wings are the key; as they convert sunlight into
our food and healing and any item we ask, so they convert our physical selves
to Provenance-selves and back again.”

“And who could
bear the bearers?” Moira guessed.  “You're meant to carry humans back and
forth, and since you're immortal or close enough there's really no need to have
other beings waiting to ferry
your
souls to the High Provenance.”

“Yes, as far
as I understand it.  We were losing warriors to this heinous action, women and
men both.  We feared not regular pain or death – as long as the body has head
and torso mostly intact and attached to the wings a living angel can activate
the flesh enough to transport it home to the arms of the High Provenance, from
which the deceased may return if the cause is just – but this was a half-death,
eternal torment.  Separation entire from that which some humans call God, and
Heaven.  The effect on the Host's morale was extreme.

“I drew as
close to the High Provenance as I dared; I, the Lord Commander.  These lost men
and women were my responsibility, my warriors.  I begged on bended knee that they
give us a solution, a way to return them to its hands.”

“The Blade.”

Leo smiled and
kissed her forehead.

“Only I could
have forged it; the creative gift is far rarer among celestials than humans. 
Those who call me the 'Blacksmith of Heaven' mean it as a back-handed complement...
I am a useful freak, as it were.

“The making of
it took a dozen years of mortal time and a thousand myriad ingredients exactly
as the High Provenance dictated, including a quantity of my own blood.  They
warned me that it must never fall into Adversarial hands because its magic
could be turned; it could be used to open a portal straight into Provenance for
demonic kind and our sacred home would become our final battlefield and our
graveyard.

“So I dared
give it into the hands of no other, at the end of the Great War.  I alone
wielded the Blade and earned another epithet – Heaven's Assassin.  I went among
those mutilated angels on Earth and spoke to each, convincing them of the power
of the Blade, and when each maimed angel was prepared I gave them Ithuriel's
Mercy, returning them to the arms of the High Provenance.”

“And did they
come back?”

“Some did, as
they were.  Some were returned changed.  Some few did not return at all.”  A
shadow crossed his face.  “May Provenance give them peace.

“But once all
the lost ones I could find had received my mercy, I set aside the Blade in
safety.  Makatiel was missing still but I thought he was merely unready;
perhaps he had found some value to his new existence and was unwilling to leave
it.  I knew that he could call my name once the time came and I would hear.

“Years passed,
before I began to see how wrong I was.  Four more angels went missing, one at a
time, all male.  I searched the mortal realm for them between my other duties. 
We all searched.  They vanished as completely as if they had gone into the High
Provenance, but the High Provenance knew them not.”

He groped for
words to translate the foreign ideas, then shook his head in defeat.  “They
were gone,” he said simply.  “Gone beyond my hearing, gone beyond our finding.

“Four hundred
years ago my nest-mate Gabriel vanished, and I knew the mortal realm was no
longer safe.  Gabriel was beloved of all the Provenance; he never would have
abandoned us willingly.  So I raised the edict that no celestial would emerge
fully into the mortal realm until the mystery of the Taken Ones was solved and
I had assured that no others would go missing, upon pain of punishment.  No one
was exempt from this edict, not even myself.”

Moira gazed at
him.

“Still two
more vanished and it was determined they had disobeyed.  The first of them may
have been deliberate, but Jophiel – the youngest you saw – was most likely
tricked into it.  He was new in his powers...

“His loss was
the second blow to me: first Gabriel, my nest-mate, my brother... and then
little Jophiel, my protégé.”

He shook his
head.  “So on the night of the Leonids I was filled with the sorrow that never
left me and wondering at the mystery, only half-focusing as I was drawn through
phase-space to where you would die.”

Leo fixed his
eyes again on her face, stroking the hair at her temple.

“Usually when
we take on the balance of the soul... it is a complete copy of the original. 
The flesh expires and the soul is saved, returned to the High Provenance. 
Usually we are... 'pregnant' with it, in a way, in that it lives in us in a
place we cannot access; we do not become privy to its secrets, its goods and
evils.

“But you...
you
glowed
to my sight, in a way that no other mortal had ever done.  It
was indescribably beautiful; I was both curious and desirous in the sight of
it, and in such portion that I dared what otherwise would not be.

“I had a few
seconds before the meteor would land; more than enough time.  I examined my
mind and found the place where an angel is meant to carry a mortal, and as your
balance came into me I opened that place and experienced you fully.  From birth
until the present moment I knew each one of your thoughts, waking and
sleeping.  I knew every one of your deeds.  I knew you as no other could; as
even yourself, experiencing yourself anew each moment, could not.

“I burned in
utter love for you and you alone, Moira.  You were all that my soul had
sought.  A match; a mate.  At long last.”

He smiled his
sad little smile.

“Forgive me my
trespass.  It was the breaking of a huge taboo, and an intrusion of your
privacy beyond the pale.”

“That will
take some time,” she said reluctantly.  “To forgive you.”

His smile
faded, replaced with a quiet acceptance.

“I mean, after
all... all you've done is broken into my loneliness and shattered my hated life
and brought me joy and love beyond what I ever imagined possible, Leo, so
really – give me a minute here.”

Moira chuckled
and kissed him back into a real grin of happiness.  “You are beyond me,” she
said, tangled up in his arms, “as beyond me as a star is beyond a snowflake. 
We're so different it's not even comparable.  How could it matter if a
celestial being knows me like that?”

“We are the
lesser ones, my lady – in that we serve, silently; so few of you even know we
exist.”

“Well, that’s
an argument I’m not going to have right now – keep going!  You fell in love and
you saved me, right?”

“Not quite.” 
Now it was his turn to turn reluctant.  She raised her eyebrows and nodded for
him to continue.

“I had found
you, and I had loved you in an instant, in totality – but that alone would not
be enough.  In order to save you I would have to break the edict out of selfish
desire, an example I dared not set.

“But I knew your
soul now; I knew it existed and I knew I would carry it straight to the High
Provenance and when they sent you back down for rebirth I could follow you.  I
could find you anywhere now, in any form.  I would wait as long as it took, a
hundred lifetimes or more, until I could come to you and make myself known. 
Until I could earn your love in truth and make you my mate, my wife.

“I was content
to wait.  And born from that contentment in the last fractions of a second from
impact was the realization, the absolute foresight – something in you was close
to uncovering the fate of the Taken Ones.  That knowledge was both important
and transient: your immortal soul would not be destroyed by death but the next
incarnation would not be privy to that same information, nor would anyone else
be so perfectly positioned to make the same connection.

“As Lord
Commander, in the second to last millisecond before impact, I chose to break
the edict – a choice no other could make.  I emerged fully from phase space
into this world.

“As a man deep
in love, in the last millisecond, I placed my physical body between the meteor
and yourself.  Even if it destroyed me others would come and you would be
watched until the reason behind my sacrifice became plain.  The secret of the
Taken Ones would be uncovered... and you would live and be saved.

“I stretched
forth my hands and caught the meteor.  It exploded in my grip and a shard of it
struck my head, locking away my memory and shattering the balance I had of you
within me.  That copy is gone; only flashes of it lay here and there in my mind
– things I know that I could not otherwise.  Reminders of the origin of my
love.

“When I lay on
the ground before you, the first time I beheld you,  I was conscious of only
three things.  One: that I loved you completely and totally, although I did not
know why.  Two: that you held a great secret, important to all of my kind, and
your life must be preserved at all costs.

“And three:
that the very sound of my voice alone could kill you.”

“And so you didn't
speak.”

“And so I did
not speak... until you in frustration and desire demanded that I do so.”  His
eyes were thoughtful.  “There is a chance that
that
fact alone will
draw my punishment, more than the breaking of the edict.  One transgression I
committed for the saving of my people – and the other could just as easily have
doomed them, all for love of a mortal.”

“Holy shit,”
Moira breathed.  “But that's not fair, you couldn't have known.  You didn't
have your memories.”

“It does not
matter; I remembered enough to fear the effect of my voice on you.  Being
willing to risk such important intelligence, especially at the ignorant command
of the mortal carrying it,” he said, lifting an eyebrow, “can be construed as a
breach in my service, to my kind and to the High Provenance themself.  I will
know more when I return to commune with them.”