Father Desmond Porter's Arc

Chapter 5 of 7

Desmond dropped the bar into the brackets and turned back to the room. Elina leaned against the wall by the door, her bad leg out straight. He helped her to the pew nearest the workbench and eased her down. He fished the humming panel from his coat and set it under an iron bucket in the corner. The sound dulled but did not stop. He lit two candles at the bench. The scattered glass caught the light and threw color across the boards. His shoulder had stiffened on the walk. He rolled it once, hissed through his teeth, and picked up the pliers. "They were waiting for me," Elina said. Her voice was flat. "Two of them, in the rocks past the dry wash. I saw the first one too late." Desmond bent a strip of lead came around the edge of a blue shard shaped like a feather. He did not look up, but he was listening. She said the scout had thrown something small at her chest. She had brushed it off before it stuck. The second scout came from behind and put her through the wall of the ruin. She played dead until she heard the beam crack above her. After that she could not move. She did not know why they left her there. Desmond thought of the panel under the bucket and said nothing. He fitted the shard into the frame and soldered the joint. The iron trembled in his good hand. He set another piece, then another. The wings took shape on the bench: two long panels, ribbed with lead, filled with blue and green and one violet shard at the base of each. He tightened the last joint and set the iron down. He stepped back. The wings lay flat on the wood, finished, catching candlelight along every seam. He did not lift them. He did not fit the straps to his shoulders. He looked at the bucket in the corner, still humming, and at Elina on the pew with her leg stretched out, and he knew that the moment he stepped outside wearing the wings, the Vael would find this door. "Not tonight," he said. He covered the wings with a cloth and blew out one candle. Elina watched him. "Then when?" He sat on the bench across from her and rested his hands on his knees. "When you can walk out first. And when I know what that panel is telling them." He picked up the violet shard from the workbench edge and set it in her palm and closed her fingers around it. Outside, the wind moved across the boards of the church. Under the bucket, the panel kept its steady, patient sound.