Sentinel of Heaven (5 page)

“One of them
invited me to a house-party her friend was having, up on the coast.  She said
that her boyfriend's frat brother needed a date.  I was just angry enough to
take her up on it.

“I called him
at the apartment.  I told him I was leaving for the weekend.  He asked if there
would be men at the party.  I told him yes.  He forbid me to go.  I said I
hadn't had anyone other than me to control my life since I left home, and it
wasn't going to start now.”

The last
things he said to me were a) that the ring was a worthless piece of tin and I
could throw it in the ocean for all he cared because b) if I went to that party
there wouldn't be anyone in the apartment when I came home.

“So I went
anyway.”

Leo's gaze was
solemn.  She knew she was telling him only half the story... and yet got the
strange feeling he understood the rest.

“That night it
was raining on the way up; the guy driving was very young, and it was probably
too much car for him.”

That, and
he was watching the rear-view mirror as his buddy put the moves on me in the
back seat.  I was letting the boy do it, too.  I liked his red hair.  I liked
his hazel eyes.  I liked the way his hands felt, doing what they were doing,
and the things he was saying in my ear.  And if we had made it to our
destination I probably would have had sex with him.  He was nice, if overly
eager.  Life would have been very different.

I hate
that, for the life of me, I can't remember that red-headed boy's name.

“The car hit a
slick patch and hydroplaned, then rolled a few times; it wound up upside down
in a ditch.  I was lucky.  An off-duty nurse saw the wreck happen and was able
to help right away as her husband called an ambulance.”

I was
lucky... the other three in the car were already dead and she knew it, and
devoted all her energy to keeping me alive.

Moira focused
her eyes on her hands, clenched in her lap.  Leo covered her fingers with his
own and she moved to cling to them, unable to speak.

Funny how all
that memory waits in your brain like a trip-panel on a landmine, ready to
explode out of the ground and tear you apart.  How fortunate I was that after
the car door crushed in on me and destroyed my leg it tore loose like a leaf in
the wind on that last flip – the nurse wouldn't have been able to reach me
otherwise. 

It all
comes back so quickly… How the high-beams of her car revealed the horror-show
around me.  The stoved-in skull of the red-haired boy that had been doing his
best to rub me off through my jeans not thirty seconds before, hanging upside
down in his seat-belt now and just as dead as my future.

An eyeball
laying on the roof that was now a floor.  I had no idea whose it was.  I had so
much blood on my cheeks that I hoped dumbly it wasn't mine.

The
nurse's husband standing on the highway shoulder and vomiting what smelled like
lobster.  Me thinking: well, that's all right for
you
, man.

The nurse
using her husband’s pocket knife to cut the left leg off my jeans at the thigh,
slice the fabric into strips, tie it into a tourniquet just above the knee. 
Marking a T on my forehead in my own blood.  “Baby girl, I hope they can save
it,” she muttered, maybe not even knowing she spoke.

Flashes,
after that.  Jaws of life, screaming metal around me.  Neck brace.  Cutting the
seat belt, prying me out.  Back board.  Seeing out of the corner of my eye –
the paramedic carrying my foot in his hands to lay it beside me on the
stretcher.  I recognized it by the sneaker.

Going
under, some time before they got me to the hospital, wondering if that was
really it.

I didn't
cry.  I never cried.

Leo squeezed
her hands – she realized with a start that she had spoken the last words
aloud.  He freed one hand to point at the back of his other wrist.

“What?” she
asked, numb.

He tapped the
spot again, right where a watchband would sit on a human man.  He enunciated
five words silently and slow, to make absolutely certain she understood him: 
Maybe it's time you did.

Moira stared
at him for a long moment.  He gripped the hand he still held gently, and tugged
it.  Come down here, his attitude said.

Slowly she
stood up, dropping the quilt he had laid over her.  He guided her to step into
the tangle of blankets and pillows on the floor, then stretched out on his
side, flipping his wings tightly behind him.

Not sure of
what else to do, she sat next to him.

Still he was
urging her with his hands, to lay down.  When she was supine he gathered her
close in his arms and stretched his upper wing over them both.

Through eyes
as dry and dusty as a marble statue's she looked up at the roof of soft white
feathers.  They were shedding a faint light, a glow bright enough to see
clearly by.

Leo tapped her
chest.  Breathe, he mouthed.  He watched her eyes, inhaling, then exhaling
slowly.  She tried to fit her rhythm to his, filling up her lungs before
pushing the air out again.  There was a huge ball of pressure in her forehead,
right behind and above her eyes, and a similar knot in her midsection where
dinner had sat pleasantly not too long ago.

His scent was
all around her – not simply the body-wash, which was already fading.  It was a
spicy musk unique from all others, like cinnamon and sea-salt and some other
flavor she couldn't yet identify.  She wondered distantly how his sweat would
taste.

Breathe, he
reminded again, still withholding his voice from her.

She felt the
fingers of his free hand slide under the hem of her shirt, pushing it up.

“Take it off?”
Moira asked him.  He nodded, his face solemn.

She shrugged out
of it, certain she'd be chilled on the drafty floor – but between the quilts
below her and the pleasant heat of his body and wing she was as warm as a late
spring afternoon.

Leo wiggled
his finger under her bra strap and looked at her.

“This too?”

Yes.

Mystified, she
complied.  Her spine only twinged a little when she reached back to unhook the
bra.  She dropped it behind her, with the shirt.

His gaze moved
up and down her torso, betraying no emotion.  Certainly no lust.  She felt her
nipples harden anyway and raised her chin to meet his eyes, willing her blush
to fade.

He brushed his
thumb across the front of her jeans.

Well okay,
then.  Her experience may have been somewhat limited but this was still the
most non-sensual striptease she'd ever been in.  Moira wiggled out of her pants
and kicked them away.

“Good?”

He tilted his
head and glanced down at her underwear.

“No.  Not
until you explain.”

Again the look
down, then up, holding her gaze.  It's important.

“You want it
so much, Leo, feel free to do it yourself!” she snapped.

His eyes lit
with a sudden irritated gleam.  She'd last seen that look on her physical
therapist, when she'd been self-pitying or lazy or balky or in any way a poor
patient.  Not even the slightest bit sexual, it was a look that said we are
going to
fix
this little red wagon.

And he was
taking her words as gospel truth, hooking his arm farther under her to lift her
torso in his grip.  She fell skin-to-skin against the broad acreage of his
chest.

His other hand
was thorough and clinical, rolling the cotton briefs down until he could grip
them at her knees and throw them off past her ankles.  Before she could
overcome her shock he slid his red-clad thigh between her legs and pinned her
to the floor.

Breathe, his
mouth shaped again.

For the very
first time in the last twenty-four hours she was terrified of him, of his
size.  Naked and trapped beneath the weight he carefully held over her...
there'd be no hope of defense or escape if he wanted to take something she
wasn't willing to give.

She bucked
once when the realization hit her, like a doe struck by the hunter's arrow.

The angel
lifted her chin gently in his hand, cajoling her into meeting his gaze.  He
seemed to put his whole heart in his sad sapphire eyes, projecting waves of
trust, of comfort, of safety and security – an insurmountable dichotomy to her
vulnerable state.

Despite
herself she began trembling.

Moira...
Moira, he said silently, pressing the words into her temple.  Leo stroked down
the side of her face, her throat, her shoulder, around the outer curve of her
breast and down her waist to her hip, and slowly along the outside of her bad
leg with its crazy-quilt web of scars – without a single stitch of covering
between her flesh and his touch.

No shield, no
armor.  Completely bare.

He petted her
again, the long comforting stroke from top to bottom; the caress that did not
flinch from her wounds but was careful not to wake their pain.  All the while
his inescapable eyes – his slow and measured inhalations that she struggled to
duplicate, shivering with adrenaline and confusion.

Breathe.

Another random
spike of fear and she was thrashing – he braced against her onslaught and
caught her flailing hands, wrapping her arms around his neck and holding her
tightly, making a low shushing exhale by her ear.

Can't fight. 
No chance of flight.  Something had to give.

Her control
snapped and she was racked by hoarse heart-torn sobs.  She fisted her hands in
his wiry hair, clinging to him with arms and legs: the only solid thing left in
the world.

A picture
formed in her mind of an arm badly broken, badly healed.  In order to set it
right it must be rebroken and aligned all over again.  The seraph had to be
cruel, in order to be kind.

Everyone had
left her behind – her father, her grandmother, Taylor, and finally even her mother. 
She hadn't had a solid foundation or a true safe place since she was five years
old, and that was wrong, and
it was not her fault.

She cried for
the little girl she had been; for the years she had lost to pain.  She cried
for the long hard road that she'd chosen to take her away from this place and
the circumstances that had driven her right back to it.  She cried for the
mother she'd never had and the father that had been taken from her too goddamn
soon.

Moira cried
like the world was ending.  Leo lay there and sheltered her.

Just breathe,
his lips signed against her ear.

Just breathe.

It felt like
ages later when the hurricane finally began to unravel – she had no energy left
to sustain it.  Her eyes still wept without ceasing.  She buried her face in
the side of his thick-hewed neck and let the tears fall against the velvety
flesh there.

She could feel
his heartbeat, deep and slow, drum-talk in a distant forest.

Moira let
herself remember – for the first time in probably decades – the last time she
saw her father.  They had driven her in a car for a little while.  They had
taken her to a big white place with lots of rooms, lots of people.  Her daddy
was in a strange bed, tilted so that it propped him up.  The nurse took off her
little black shoes and raised her up, carefully setting her down between the
wires and the tubes, in the crook of her daddy's arm. 

She had laid
her head on his shoulder and said how she'd missed him while he'd been gone. 
Said how she'd fell at recess and skint her knee and Mama had scolded her for
it.  Said how this was a new dress she'd just got and she didn't like it,
'cause it smelled like starch.  Said how she wanted him to come back home soon
so they could play ball again.

And he had
smiled and kissed the top of her head and when the adults started talking of
boring adult things she fell asleep held by her daddy, listening to his
heartbeat.

She'd woken up
in the car on the way home, her little black shoes in the floorboard.

A week later
she'd worn them and the starchy dress again to go to the funeral home where her
mother had said “I can't, I can't, I just simply cannot,”  through her clenched
teeth and walked away, to leave Moira alone with her old Sunday School teacher
who gently tried to finish explaining.

Daddy is
there, in the box at the end of the aisle.

No, he can't
wake up.  No, he can't get up.  No, he won't smile or talk.  No, he won't come
home.  No, he won't play ball, not ever again.

Sometimes
people get sick.  Very sick.  They can't be made better.  There's no medicine
that will help.  And when that happens, they die.

Death is a
long box and little black shoes.

It's okay to
be sad, the kind old man had said, wishing he could pick her up like one of his
granddaughters, not quite feeling close enough with her family to do so.

It's okay to
miss them.  It's okay to cry.

And what she
had thought then was: I didn't cry when I skint my knee, because cryin' doesn't
fix things.  I'd cry a million million tears, if it'd just bring my Daddy back.

But it won't.

The man had
taken her by the hand and led her to the chapel steps where he handed her a
little Golden Book that she'd memorized before she'd turned four, but she read
it again to be polite.  The organ played on behind the big wooden doors.  She'd
never again hear the hymn “In The Garden” without flinching inside, no matter
how long she would live.

Laying in the
hospital bed with her father, asleep in the cradle of his arm – that was the
last time she'd felt safe and utterly loved.  She had searched for that
tenderness as an adult; had thought she’d found it in that erstwhile fiancé
Taylor Madison, confidence man extraordinaire.  But after discovering that only
the first and last things he'd said to her had been absolutely true and all
else in between had been shades of lie...

Everyone
leaves, or is taken away.  Possessions are lost or stolen.  Friends are
transient.  Lovers are false.  Even your body will fail you.  All that's left
is what's locked in your mind and your heart, until time itself strips them
bare.  At least you probably won't be aware of their theft.

Moira let all
her muscles unclench slowly, body collapsing on the quilt, her hands resting on
the back of Leo's neck.  He studied her with subdued approval.

“I cry ugly,”
she said at last.

No, he shook
his head, gently wiping her cheek dry.

She traced his
soft smile with her fingertips, gradually becoming aware of their tangled legs,
of the press of his chest against hers and how it moved with his breathing.

Before she
could let a second thought intrude, she took his face between her hands and
drew him down to her for a kiss.  She felt his breath hitch for the first time
(and oh, what a sweet shred of revenge) and his arms tightened around her
back.  She felt no pain, only a melting of the frost that had seemed to cover
her since dinner.

And now, with
his mouth tender but growing more possessive... now, with one hand cupping the
curve of her buttock and pressing her against him...  She ran her heel up the
back of his strong thigh and lifted her hips, gasping.

He trailed
kisses down her throat as his hand brushed up her side; for a moment her breast
was heavy against the hollow of his palm.

“Yes, oh yes,”
Moira murmured, everything else forgotten in a wave of desire.

Leo froze,
lifting his lips from her, leaning his forehead momentarily against her chin as
if seeking to steady himself.  He forced all the air out of his lungs and drew
it back, ragged.  His hand fell open; he moved it away deliberately, holding it
separate from her skin.

“Why?” she
asked, dazed.  He raised up on his knees; when she twisted her leg to wrap it around
his hip he caught it and held it apart from him, cautiously but firmly.

Once he’d
succeeded in extracting himself from her embrace he sat back on his heels, face
unreadable in the light of the lamp.  Without his warmth the chill of the
living room was as bracing as a slap.  She pulled her scattered clothing over
herself, a belayed sense of modesty and shame rising up in her.

Leo glanced at
her, just for an instant, then averted his eyes.

“Look at me,”
she demanded, her heart as empty as a dry well.

With obvious
reluctance he obeyed.  His expression was as hang-dog and hopeless as ever
she'd seen on another sentient creature.

Moira flashed
with a sudden rage – she knew him capable of speech as much as she.  How dare
he draw her in and let her respond only to peel her off of him like a piece of
trash and drop her by the wayside without a single syllable of explanation.

He saw her
seething anger and took it, accepting it utterly.  His sorrow-filled eyes gave
no excuses.  His lack of resistance was the only possible foil to her
animosity, letting all the fire out of her in the next millisecond.

Moira balled
up her clothing and stood, feeling anesthetized.  “Goodnight, Leo,” she
murmured between senseless lips, dropping everything carelessly on the laundry
pile as she shuffled back to her bedroom and shut the door behind her.

She woke to
the shrilling of her alarm clock the next morning, after a parched and restless
night of little sleep.  She turned it off with alacrity, but picked up her cell
and called her manager's voice-mail before she could fall back asleep.

Interesting
how much easier it is to talk to a recording of the old hag, rather than
Grendel's mother herself.  At least I sound good and sick today
, she
thought, mouthing the required niceties and hanging up. 
My sinuses are as
swollen as if I'd gone four rounds with Tyson and then walked through a field
of ragweed.  I probably look like it too.  Face all puffy and blotched, nose
red and raw, eyes bloodshot – feh!

She rolled
back into the center of her mattress and indulged her misery for a bit.