A Witch's Beauty

by A Witch's Beauty (lit)

  Only by your hand?

  It was whispered in his head, a question. He clenched his teeth. She could bear the bite of the unforgiving steel, but not his freely offered touch? Or with my permission. You have it.

  Evil is a choice, and only the one making it can unmake it. Jonah understands that in a way you don't. Her voice echoed in his head, distant, wandering, as if she spoke to herself, more than to him. Good has to fight evil until that decision happens, to keep it from harming others.

  "Which is exactly what you do, Mina. You're not evil." He spoke it aloud this time.

  Her fingers closed on the grip, rested there for a while. The sun continued to disappear, a day ending, like all others the Goddess had created. Wondrous, strange, normal. The sandstone strata of the rock hills that formed the backdrop of the town were pink and brown in the deepening twilight. He wondered if she'd passed out, for she'd bowed her head so he couldn't see her face. Maybe she had, for it was a long time before she stirred.

  David?

  I'm here.

  He sensed her twinge of relief, like an ache in an old wound. Familiar. Then she raised her head, lifted the dagger and drove it into the open, loosely curled palm of her three-fingered hand. The one on which she'd broken the middle finger only hours before. Her dragon form had destroyed the splint.

  Her scream echoed and bounced off of the silent buildings, the hills beyond, the long expanses of desert and scrub that reflected sound and yet swallowed it at once.

  His own hand was clenched into a hard fist on his knee. She was destroying him. Was she right? What if he and the angels were making a difficult life even more so? For the past sixteen years, he'd vowed no cry of help that reached his ears would go unanswered, that he would never cause harm to an innocent.

  Would his winged brethren scoff at him, because he thought of Mina as an innocent? Savagery is not nobility... She was both. The dichotomy as well as the synthesis.

  She'd left her hand pinned, and now she had passed out. Cautious, he rose and went to her, taking slow steps to see if anything appeared to be repelled by his proximity.

  When David squatted down at her side at last, he immediately shielded her face from the harsh glare of the sun with the angle of his wings. The blood on her hand, the slight twitch of her fingers, made him feel a fury he hadn't felt in so long. A fury he thought he'd vented time and again in the battlefield until he'd purged it for good.

  Apparently not.

  As he slid the blade free, he held her wrist to make it a steady motion. So thin, so fragile. And yet he vividly remembered the hot breath of the dragon singeing him several times, the way her mermaid tentacles yanked his feet from beneath him. How she'd nailed him with that pipe in the jaw the first time they'd met.

  She's fought them. She's fought us. Everyone, even herself, all her life.

  He was certain she couldn't bear him healing the wound, but he could take three heartbeats to go to the nearest place to lift some basic first-aid supplies without notice, hoping the cause would balance the pilfering.

  "David." She opened her eyes as he squatted there, one hand still holding her wrist, bloodstained knife in the other.

  "It's all right. I'm here." Though he didn't read anything in her face, her lack of response mocked the words. "Maybe I'm making things worse, Mina," he said. "But for whatever reason, I can't seem to stay away from you. I've got to believe there's a reason for that."

  He'd expected her to agree, or argue, but instead she gazed pensively down the long stretch of street, the desert beyond it. "If they do decide I have to die," she said, "you need to do it. Okay?"

  "We're not talking about this."

  When her other hand clamped over his, the ferocity, the sudden, contorted intensity of her ravaged face, surprised him. "Promise me. You say I matter to you." She shook her head as he opened his mouth. "Don't say it. I don't believe in love, and it doesn't matter anyway. But I know you're honorable. Promise me, when it comes to that, you'll... You're the only one I want to do it. The only one it's possible that I'll let do it without fighting and costing lives. You'll care, and you'll do it when it has to be done."

  He couldn't stop himself anymore. He slid an arm around her, moving her so she was cradled in his lap, her injured hand pressed to her breast, smearing it with blood.

  "I will be with you at the end and the beginning," he promised. "Angels say that to our fallen comrades. Okay?"

  She stared at him, and it broke his heart, her obvious struggle to accept his words as truth, as if no one had ever made her a promise. So he made himself say the hated words to remove all doubt from her gaze. He suspected it was the closest thing to a declaration of love she would accept from him.

  "If Jonah orders your death, I'll be the one to do it."

  Fourteen

  SHE laid her head on his chest. He tightened his arms around her, moved beyond words at the simple gesture of acceptance.

  Lifting her, he rose and began to move toward the saloon. "There's a clean place in there for you to rest," he explained. She moved her head in a silent nod.

  The door to one of the small upstairs rooms had apparently gotten stuck when pulled closed on the last day of filming. When he worked with the swollen wood and rusty hinges, fixing it with carpentry skills he'd remembered better than he'd expected, he'd found a utility cot, two folding chairs and a small pile of costumes and accessories starting to gather some dust. He suspected the cleanup team that came in after the film crew hadn't been able to get the door open, either, and so assumed the room that lay beyond it hadn't been used.

  Since the cot was clean and had sheets, he laid her down on it, adjusted the covers to make her feel less exposed by her nakedness and sat on the edge. She tilted her head to look around the room, her expression distant, probing. A bit wary. She was back to being his witch again.

  "Bad things happened here. What is this place?"

  "It's a ghost town. Nevada has a small handful of them still standing. Most were abandoned when the gold was gone and nineteenth-century settlers moved on. But this place... disease hit it. Killed a lot of the settlers, enough that the rest were forced to move on, posting signs warning others against coming into the town. Looters came anyway, died here of the same disease, which was justice, since they killed some of the sick people to get their families to turn over the few valuables they had left. It was a long time ago, but you can feel the spirits that have lingered."

  His gaze shifted as the thin layer of dirt on the floorboards stirred, a small ripple of acknowledgment. They both watched it settle.

  "That's why you brought me here."

  "I thought it would help."

  "It did. I felt the dark energy when I was balancing. It confused me at first. But you don't belong here. How do you know so much about this place?"

  He lifted a shoulder. "I explored the area after the Canyon Battle. Searching for any Dark Ones that went to ground. I liked the desert, the quiet of it, the open space. And I liked this place."

  David stared down at her. The power of Mina's memory still haunted him, on a variety of levels, prompting him to continue, to say more than he'd intended. "Sometimes... I'm an angel, but the human part of me is drawn, for lack of a better word, to the remains of human spirits who don't understand why things happen the way they do."

  "So this is your Graveyard." Mina swept her gaze over the room again, then back to his face. He had broken his promise at the Citadel, but maybe he was learning from his mistakes. She'd felt his frustration and distress when he couldn't help her the way he wanted, out on the street. He'd surprised her when he got past that to determine what she needed, and respected those needs more than his own desires. Now his voice, the steady, thoughtful tones, were soothing the bumpy terrain of her still-roused psyche, even as she sensed he could use some reassurance himself, though for what she didn't know. His skirmish with her as a dragon certainly wasn't the most intense battle he'd ever experienced. Regardless, it was moot, for reassurance wasn't so
mething she knew how to offer.

  "You didn't go to the Citadel to report to your captain, did you?"

  "No. I needed to know more about you. To make sure I can protect you to the best of my ability."

  She'd spent all her life guarding herself, hiding in the shadows, knowing that ignorance about her nature and capabilities was her best weapon in a world full of enemies. But for the first time, she had the hint that knowledge could be equally potent in the hand of an ally. From the way he looked at her, as well as how he'd dealt with her struggle in the street, she could tell he now understood about the darkness in her. Once he'd had a grasp on that knowledge, he'd saved her from his own folly, standing between her and a battalion of angels, his own Legion Commander. She'd never had an ally.

  But that wasn't the only thing he'd learned. As he sat on the edge of her bed, so careful and still, she thought of the way he'd carried her up here. As if she were precious and fragile. There were shadows in his gaze as he looked at her, seeing something more than he'd seen before. As she looked more closely, she thought what was simmering beneath his calm facade wasn't distress. It was fury, barely banked. And not with her.

  "And did what you find make me worth protecting?" she ventured. Though she didn't want to ask him the specifics, she was too fragile to deal with what that fury was. He already had the ability to make her feel things she'd never expected.

  "You were that before I went there. I learned what I needed to learn. It just came at a much higher cost to you than it should have. I'm sorry."

  "I don't understand you at all." Before he could respond to that with something she was sure would make him even more incomprehensible to her, she pressed on. "What did Jonah mean when he said I'm not your sister?"

  David's features stilled. "He let you hear that. He didn't say it aloud."

  "No."

  "Son of a bitch." David rose, paced away. Since the skies didn't blacken and the building didn't crumble around them, Mina surmised that it was a general expletive, not specifically aimed at Jonah or his Maker. "This isn't about that."

  "Are you sure?" she asked quietly.

  His wing tips left trails in the dust on the scarred wood floors. She wondered if he would answer her, for the long moments before he did.

  "You're right." David said at last, the two words barely audible. Then more strongly, "He's right, too. It is about her. It's about you as well. It's about anyone forced to accept a life so intolerable they view death with indifference." Turning to face her, he pinned her with that intense gaze that made her so uncomfortable, yet unable to look away.

  "I didn't take a woman until I was twenty-seven."

  That was a surprise, for she knew from Anna that angels, particularly the Legion, were very carnal, using sensual pleasure to help ground themselves.

  "I couldn't bear the touch of a woman for a very long time," he continued, maintaining that rigid stance, as if he were making a report before his battalion captain. "The other angels... they regularly ground themselves after battle in a woman's body. I'd go when they went in groups. Kept thinking I'd join them, but I'd reach out and..." He shook his head, something rippling over his skin, a tremor, but it had the odd look of a specter, a goblin hunched over him as he shrugged his shoulders.

  "You couldn't," she said softly. She wanted to reach out to him. Fortunately she was too weak and he was too far away. "Why?"

  He sighed. "Because I'd start to touch her and two things would happen. One, I'd hear that damnable thumping in my head. Thud. Thud." He flinched and turned toward the window. With his head bowed, eyes troubled and focused on the floor, he reminded her of one of the art books she'd rescued, the poses that depicted the struggle of man against eternal truths. It bothered her, but he continued before she could grope for something to say.

  "That was the sound my sister's bed made, hitting the wall as my father raped her at night. She knew I couldn't bear to hear her cries. I burst in one night, tried to pull him off her. He beat me up pretty badly. Broke my arm. After that, she'd bite down on the pillow, wouldn't make a sound, afraid I'd interfere. But we were twins. I could hear it in my head. I'd go in the next day when she wasn't there, when my father was gone, and see the bite marks in the pillow, the marks in the wall where the headboard hit."

  She knew now what else he'd found out about her at the Citadel. And she understood his fury, even as she couldn't breathe. It is about her. And it's about you... The picture was coming into focus, an understanding of the darkness within him. He was giving her the fringe shadows, and though she knew it was dangerous, that it would only strengthen the illusion of a bond between them, Mina couldn't stop him. She wanted to know. Even more strangely, that compulsion to go to him was growing in her. She wished she was strong enough to do it, slide her arms around him, lay her cheek against that broad back, between the wings, offer comfort. Something she hadn't even known she had in her to offer.

  "I'd see the other angels with women, and I knew what they were doing was clean, real, the way it should be. But I didn't protect her, and he hurt her, so when I touched a female, I was repulsed. Eaten up with guilt. I didn't save my sister, so the act held nothing but revulsion for me.

  "It was that way for a long time," he said after another moment. "At one point, I stopped going with them. It was too awkward. I started using meditation to ground instead. That's why I've discovered places like this. They called me the Monk. Teased me, but not in a bad way. Angels... we know each other's minds, so they knew what was happening with me, maybe even better than I did. I know you've seen the worst side of them, but we share each other's thoughts. Just as close as reaching out your mind to one another, never alone."

  He gave a half chuckle that had little humor in it. "What my heart and mind couldn't handle, my body was raging to do, so I had to meditate pretty hard to keep those hormones under control." He arched a brow in her direction. "You think you fight darkness? Try being a twenty-seven-year-old guy who's never even had a girlfriend, surrounded by a species that regularly uses intense and creative sex to ground itself."

  "I can't think of a worse torment. So what changed?"

  His quick, gratifying grin at her dry tone changed to a thoughtful thin line. "One afternoon, I'd found a quiet place by a pond. I've always preferred Earth locales for my meditation, rather than the Seven Heavens or the stars, other planets. A girl came while I was there, about my age. She didn't see me, so I thought, and she was going for a swim. Took off her clothes, one piece at a time. Slow. So slow it was like I was the fabric sliding off her skin. I could feel it. Feel her, even before I touched her." He stared out the window, obviously caught in the memory, but Mina didn't feel offended, for she heard many things in his tone. Awe. A man who'd faced salvation, just waiting for him to reach out and grasp it.

  "She let down her hair. This beautiful, raven black hair."

  David swallowed, remembering the way his loins had ached, so hard. It had almost brought him to his knees, torn between lust and despair, self-loathing, wonder. For one horrid moment, his pain was so great he almost wanted to break her neck for making him feel this way.

  Right as he had that thought, she turned and looked at him. She had the softest, pinkest lips, wet, and they formed words.

  "I don't know what she said. Don't know to this day, but it was an invitation, and my feet were moving. Even though I remember her features, in hindsight, there was nothing exceptional about the way she looked. Just a girl with a pretty face and kind eyes. So kind. The eyes were what were different. So still. Tranquil. She was gentle, innocent, but also... trusting. I swam with her and she played with me, got us splashing, carrying on." The cadence of his voice slowed, dropping oddly, catching her attention as much as the story itself. "And then just as suddenly she was in my arms, all wet and naked, and I couldn't stop myself. I was trying to outrun the demons, so I was rushing, but she whispered to slow down, take my time, take my pleasure, and nothing would chase me from her.

  "She took me into her b
ody, but more than that, she took me into her soul, and I got lost in her, all the parts of myself coming unglued so I could see them, all those terrible memories, floating away, separate from all the things I'd wanted to do but couldn't.

  "And she forgave me. For my sister. I don't mean she spoke it. It was just there, and as I lay upon her body, and she clasped me with her legs, kissed my throat and chest with her lips, it was like everywhere she put her mouth tore open those wounds, let them bleed out. I cried."

  When David averted his face briefly, embarrassed, Mina felt a bittersweet twist in her heart.

  "I'd never thought about what the word forgiveness meant until then. Maybe I figured it was just a way to get out of a responsibility, but then I understood it. Forgiveness is something given by someone who sees all of you, every dark and light corner, who knows where you've been, where you'll walk, where you'll misstep again, sees it against what everyone else is or has done, and knows it's going to be okay. That things are the way they were meant to be, that everything has a reason, even those that can't be explained. That it's okay to just be, to take that precious moment of stillness and hold on to it, use it to give you the strength to fuel everything else."

  When he turned his head now, Mina saw the glitter of tears in his eyes. "It was then I knew that lying with a woman was like every other powerful magic in the world. A force for good or evil, depending on your intent. And I was denying myself that magic, and how it could make me stronger, a better angel. A better man. One who would help people like my sister."

  "What happened to the girl?"

  "I slept, and when I woke, she was gone. I've never told anyone about it, not even Jonah." He paused, stared out the window, then shifted his gaze to her. "Maybe because the more I've thought about it, the more I believe the girl I was with that day was the Lady Herself, helping me heal."

  He cleared his throat, came back to sit on the edge of her bed. "So again, I'm sorry."