Sentinel of Heaven (37 page)

“Is this...
what you really are?”  Her voice was faint but firm.

He spread his
gaping mouth to reply in a voice like a forge's furnace; she saw that even his
tongue had become a sharp silver blade.

“No... but it
is what I can become, if need demands it.”

Moira nodded
decisively, stepping back and craning her neck to meet his eyes with no trace
of fear.  If this was her last gift, her last moment with him – she wanted to
make him proud.

“Go get 'em,
baby,” she growled.  “Let's do this.”

The monstrous
form of the angel stepped backwards off the cliff, hovering in the air to fill
his eyes with her one last time, then soared up into the skies.  His rising
body began to glow like a star – instinctively Moira dropped on her front to
the flat rock of the cliff.  Leo was preparing to make a spectacle of himself
so he must have dropped the glamour; if he was now a target then so was she, if
anyone had the scope and aim to send a bullet this way...

Leo ascended
until he was barely visible as a spark against the evening light, then began to
plummet.  Wings folded, he shot screaming out of the vault of heaven like a
fighter jet in a nose-dive, dropping past her towards the entrenched army.

At the last
possible instant he snapped his wings opened and pulled out of the dive to skim
in an arc that traced the innermost trench.  The men were firing – both regular
artillery and the strange big guns – but his momentum was too much:  he
bypassed them all.

Even at this
distance she could see him extend his sword arm into the trench as casually as
a cook might stir a pot of soup, and the pale and red specks that flew out in
his wake were severed hands and arms and heads...

When his speed
declined almost halfway around the trench he rose again with alacrity, zigzagging
to dodge their fire and laughing – the dark ferrous mirth of a death-bringer
that Moira could hear even from a mile away, intended to cast all enemy within
ear-shot into cowardice and rampant terror.

“It's time,”
Moira breathed.

She set her
items in front of her carefully so that they would not roll away, then reached
around into her back pocket and drew the feather out of her wallet, returning
the billfold to its place.  She took the Blade in her right hand and the thick
metal flashlight in her left with the feather pinned to it by her thumb.  She
glanced down at the waiting crate and took a deep breath.

Then she
turned her eyes to the feather and growled “Take me there, into that box!  I
want to go there now!”

Moira kept
that thought hard in her mind as the world shook and shimmied around her, as
reality roared and melted against its will, leaving jagged edges that bled into
the other place and back again to trade the rock she lay on for wood and filthy
chains.

The square of
light overhead disappeared instantaneously; the huge booming noises that
followed must be the lead shield building itself over her new prison – and her
grave, if she was unlucky.

The heat of
battle outside was a distant murmur; was the lead shell air-tight?  Too late to
be concerned with that now.  Around her in the complete darkness was the sound
of ragged breathing, and a stench that was rank and sickening.

Moira pushed
herself to her feet and turned the flashlight on.

The walls of
the box were lined in a fine metallic mesh, overlapping carefully at all
corners and the now closed door overhead.

It goes under
the floor as well, said the little voice.  A huge Faraday cage.

“How the fuck
do you even know this shit?” Moira muttered, aggravated.

Not my fault
you don't remember high school science classes.  The teacher wasn't even that
cute.

“Let's stick
to the
useful
thoughts, shall we?”

The feather
was a smear of ash under her fingers, all its magic spent.  No going back now.

You want
useful thoughts? the voice said.  Do the job you came to do.

Okay
then.  Ignore the smell.  It's about the same as a stockyard and I’ve seen
those.  The monkey house at the zoo.  Breathe normally and in a moment I'll get
used to it.

Gingerly she
lowered the flashlight's beam to play over the surface of the bodies around
her.  Eight... all eight were here.  Some of them looked so bad – so completely
dead, even – that she had only Leo's word that they still lived.

Start with the
worst; send them home first.  Work your way up to those that look almost okay.

Moira chose,
and moved to kneel by the body.  Both its hands and feet had been removed but
no flies circled the ragged tissue, even in this summer heat.  No maggots.  Maybe
they couldn't digest ethereal flesh.  The rest of him was wizened like a mummy,
pale and dry.  As she sat hesitating she saw the bony rack of his ribs flex in
a shallow breath.

Mercy,
she thought. 
Send him home.

She winced and
forced herself to lay her palm on his upper shoulder, setting the tip of the
Blade where Leo had shown her.  The skin of his arm shifted sickeningly under
her touch;  she exerted all her will not to gag.

“In the name
of Ithuriel,” she recited,” I have been sent to grant you mercy.”

There was no
movement to show the crippled thing had heard her.

Moira leaned
against the Blade but her arm bent at the elbow and the point did not penetrate
his skin. 
Can't think of them as sentient beings.  Can't think of this as
murder, as killing.

Let it be
like ending the life of a dog dying in the street, hit by a car.  Euthanasia. 
Mercy.

The chest
stirred again under the Blade's point and she groaned in horror.

Do it, don't
even think, think of nothing, think of Leo being shot at outside and nearly
dying, possibly being caught and done the same as these because you would not
push, and
push
!

She did.

Between the
ribs it didn't take much force.  Less effort than splitting up a chicken
carcass for frying, and the Blade was incredibly sharp.  The body bucked once
under her hand, stiffening up – then slackening.

Moira pulled
back with tears streaming down her face that she didn't even feel.  The
finally-empty corpse was falling into dusty ash as Leo's feather had, already
losing shape.

“Thank God;
it's done,” she said.  The words were nearly a prayer.

She stood up
slowly and panned the light around.  Next was one of the emasculated ones; a
great raw hole in his groin where his genitals would have been.

Mercy,
yes.  Let me become an angel of mercy to them.

In a numb
space between shock and religious transport she crouched beside him, hand to
his shoulder.  “It will be over soon... In the name of Ithuriel, I have been
sent to grant you mercy.”

Ritual
words: I have been sent.  This is not my deed.  Any blame passes beyond me to
the name upon which I vow.

Moira set the
point of the great knife again, gritted her teeth, and leaned forward.  The
body sighed and she sighed with it.  Soon too, the empty shell was turning to
ash like a log burned up in the fireplace grate.

Send the other
unmanned one home next... what a horrible thing to do to them; as if all the
rest of this wasn't enough?

She sought him
out; he was broader across the shoulders and caked with filth.  He was livelier
too, turning his blind head in search of the interloper among them.

“Shhh... I am
here... you will be back in Provenance soon...”  She touched his shoulder and
said the words; he responded by gesturing with his chin peremptorily – do it!

Moira did.

The fourth was
missing both his hands but retained his feet; his arms were bound cruelly
behind his back at the elbows.  Although he breathed at an almost normal pace
he seemed oblivious to her, completely withdrawn from the world to a place
within himself.

Moira said the
words and gave him the kiss of the Blade, and as she struggled to rise again
she had the thought:
maybe it's starting to get easier.

Her stomach
rebelled; she staggered over to the wall and gagged desperately, spewing up water
and half-dissolved pills and liquid scraps of her lunch on the beach rock a
lifetime ago.  She couldn't stop until even the memory of food had been purged.

At last she
wiped her streaming eyes and her trembling lips.  The noise outside was getting
worse, louder.  Half to go.  Get on with it, Moira.

The fifth
chose himself; he was flinging his body against his chains and thrashing
towards her.

“You want
this?” she murmured in disbelief.  He nodded with such deliberation she could
not mistake the movement for anything else.

He calmed
instantly when he felt her touch; when she whispered the ritual litany to him
he smiled, and the smile stayed on even when the Blade sank...

Three left.

Next closest,
in the absence of other factors.  She hadn't had a chance to absorb all the pain
medication; with the stress and strain of her mission her back and knee were
singing out in agony.  She crawled across the floor to the sixth.

“Oh,” she
gasped when the flashlight's beam revealed him.  “He's barely more than a
child!”

He was
slender, painfully so.  She would have put his age at sixteen or seventeen if
he was human, because he had a gangliness to his limbs and a softness to his
face that spoke of one or two more seasons of growth to come – growth now
forever denied.

He was
catatonic and she blessed that fact – she didn't dare imagine what this little
altar-boy had suffered through.  The Blade did its work again at her words.

The seventh
was mostly whole, covered with cuts and bruises, trembling in all his limbs –
the chains rattled as she drew near.  When she reached for his shoulder he
flinched.

“Shhh,” she
soothed him, petting his filthy flesh.  He shook his head rapidly.

“You can't
stay like this,” she murmured to the curve of his ear visible beneath his
helmet.  “You can't fly, you can't feed, you can't go home.  I know you're
scared... but it’s only a moment, I promise, and all the pain is gone.  The
Lord Commander himself told me your soul goes straight into the hands of the
High Provenance, and if your cause is just you may return.

“I have to
believe him, okay?  I have to trust that he told the truth and so do you.  This
is the only way you can ever go back to Provenance.

“We're both going
to be brave together, all right?  Breathe for me.  Deep breaths.”

She inhaled
and exhaled dramatically; he struggled to match her respiration.

“Are you
ready, warrior?” she asked a moment later.  The wounded angel set his jaw and
nodded.

“In the name
of Ithuriel, I have been sent to grant you mercy.  I commend your soul to the High
Provenance.”

She pushed as
he exhaled and saw peace cross his features as life left the body.

Feeling
wretched and utterly demolished, she dragged herself towards the last trapped
angel.  “Just you and me now, my friend – all the others have been sent.”  The
beam from the flashlight traveled up his feet to his calves and knees where he
lay on his side and she mused that he must be the cleanest one in the crate,
including herself at this point – until she saw the shining streaks on his
thighs and buttocks, still wet.

“Ohhhh... oh
no, oh honey,” she breathed.  “I'm so sorry...”  She pulled herself to where
she could sit by his chest, stripping off her shirt to lay it over his violated
flesh and cover it as best she could.  It was a worthless gesture and she knew
it, but it tore her soul in a new way to see such evidence and do nothing.

From here she
could tell that this angel's head had not been shaven; gold curls forced
themselves in a riotous wave under the helmet’s rim.

“You,” she
said, making the connection in an ocean of sorrow.  “B368's perfect victim. 
You were the one he was after in all those photographs.  It was you he wanted
to hurt, and take pictures of him hurting... all the humans were just
stand-ins.  Oh honey.”

He shifted
towards her voice and the back of his helmet came unfastened.  It couldn't
latch properly over the thickness of that gorgeous hair.  Moira reached for the
device and cringed as she pulled it off of him, the spikes sliding out of his
empty eyelids.

“You're
Gabriel,” she whispered.  “You sent the warning.”

“... water,”
the blinded man begged in a raw and weak voice.  The battle outside was getting
even louder, with occasional thumps that might mean some sort of mortars or
explosives – and though she knew she should hurry and complete her mission she
dare not deny his wish.

Unclipping the
bottle from her belt Moira lifted his face in one hand and carefully poured the
lukewarm water between his lips with the other.  His face had high cheekbones
and a strong forehead like Leo's, but finer details and a sensual shape to his
chin and jaw.

Fleetingly she
wondered what color his eyes had been.

“Are you
ready?” she asked, setting the bottle aside to pick up the Blade a final time.

Gabriel nodded
silently.

She kept his
face cradled in her palm as he turned his chest to bare it for the knife.

“In the name
of Ithuriel, I have been sent to grant you mercy,” she told him quietly.  He
moved his cheek against her hand as a kitten would, for the simple comfort of
her touch.

She thrust
home the Blade with an anguished cry before her will could falter, giving vent
to her tears as he passed beyond pain.  Gently she lowered his head to the
floor and collapsed beside his ashen husk, holding the spear point away from
both their bodies.

Moira knew she
should collect herself; she should retrieve her shirt and put it back on and
get ready to wait, holding the last of her water to force down the pills,
watching for a sign of victory or defeat, preparing to die if need be.  It was
what a Capable Woman would do.