Ember (The Ember Series)

by Carol Oates

  Candra nodded against his chest. “I have memories, but it’s like they overlap. Sometimes I remember you there and sometimes I have the same memory and you aren’t.”

  “Hmmm,” he hummed.

  She knew that was his influence. It was just like the drive to Draven’s where she knew she saw things but couldn’t recall them properly.

  “I had just found Brie and was being a petulant child, stubbornly refusing to accept she had moved on with her life. She seemed happy, relaxed. I felt nothing. It was like someone had taken a blade and sliced through the connection we once shared, and it hurt really badly. I followed her while she shopped, keeping my distance and trying to figure out a way to approach her. Then I saw you. I could tell, you know, right away…” Sebastian ducked his head down to Candra’s so she only had to tilt her face a little to look at him.

  She quickly wiped a stray tear away, but he saw and averted his eyes, clearly unsure how to react now that his bravado had slipped.

  “You met Brie outside a little coffee shop, and I knew…I knew you were good. It shone out of you like a beacon of light in utter blackness. You sat outside, and there was a young child at the next table. He was terribly upset, and you turned to him and made a funny face then smiled. The little kid, he stopped crying right away and smiled back at you. Kids see through masks so easily. If you had been merely pretending to be good, he would have known; he would have been afraid. I couldn’t hurt you.”

  “I don’t remember that day,” Candra said sadly. She wished she could recall it as vividly as he clearly did. It was just one day out of many for her; it wasn’t anything that she would have committed to memory.

  “That was the first day I felt hope in a very, very long time.”

  Candra curled in tighter to his warmth, uselessly attempting to stifle a yawn. Sebastian brought his other arm up to wrap around her shoulder and pulled her closer.

  “Why would my father do this? Why would he go against what he believed? I don’t understand. I don’t want to have to choose,” she murmured. There was no choice. She knew she’d been kidding herself. Draven was right: hate and love were two sides of the same coin. She had been such a fool. Not that she was in love with Sebastian. They had been spending so much time together she had grown attached to him without realizing it. If she was to choose, she would choose to stay with him. But Draven had made himself clear. He wanted her to barter herself for peace, a tentative peace that she had to hold onto at any cost. So there was no choice.

  Candra hadn’t noticed Sebastian stiffen under her until he spoke quietly.

  “I’m not good, Candra. You should know this about me. There’s a monster inside me that has never been allowed to be laid to rest. I would kill again in a heartbeat, if I had to. You see this body and this face, but you can’t see the ugliness that’s inside. I’ve been a black cloud over everything and everyone I’ve ever come into contact with through my entire existence. You see a storm as a shelter.”

  “My eyes are open. I see you,” Candra assured him. She wasn’t under any misconception about Sebastian. She saw him for what he was from the beginning. There was a darkness and sadness inside him that was almost overwhelming, but at other times, looking at him was like trying to focus on the sun: unbearably, dazzlingly bright and beautiful.

  “That’s beyond anything I have the right to ask for from you.”

  He relaxed once more, and his breathing softened. Candra yawned again. She would have to get up soon and felt as if she had hardly slept. “Where is God in this? How could he just leave you here all this time? What about the Devil?”

  “God, or the Arch, was the very first of us. He is there somewhere, but I’d like to believe he’s simply forgotten about us.”

  By his tone and the way he said he would like to believe it, Candra suspected he didn’t.

  “As for the Devil…Lucifer, who God loved above all others.” He laughed bitterly and sighed before continuing. “We are the light, Candra, the light bringers. The first Watchers brought the darkness to the world, and we returned it to the light. We were the ones loved above all others, for what we did.”

  Candra’s sleepy brain worked hard to grasp what Sebastian was explaining. She wasn’t sure she was getting it right, because she’d thought it was the other way around. Before speaking to Draven, she thought those like Sebastian, the Nuhra, were the light because they were first, but she was wrong. Everything Candra knew from the past was confused and mixed up. Nothing she had ever learned truly prepared her for the things she was learning and experiencing now. The Nuhra were the most loved and cherished of all the angels before they came to earth, but they were not the first Watchers. If Lucifer was the second wave of Watchers…

  Sebastian’s voice was grievous and barely audible when he finally confessed, “We are Lucifer.”

  If life was a rich tapestry, elaborately woven with colors and textured yarns, full of intricate details mapping out every moment of our existence, then could it be said that one slipped stitch or one knot out of place could alter the entire design beyond recognition? Sebastian pondered it as the perfect metaphor for his life.

  He awoke stiff and aching from a heavy slumber, heavier than he had known in, possibly, forever. The reason for his nocturnal oblivion was still cradled, asleep in his arms, wrapped around his bare chest as if he might disappear with the sunrise. Sebastian guessed his peaceful hours came because he was physically holding onto the precious bounty he was protecting. Holding her so close meant no one could steal her in the night. He shifted a little to alleviate the ache at the bottom of his spine from the metal bars at his back. They hadn’t fallen asleep in the most comfortable of positions.

  He expected guilt to hit him in the cold light of day, but there wasn’t so much as a trace. She believed the act so easily, being nice was exhausting for him, but Candra believed he was revealing his feelings for her.

  The first level in his assault was complete. Sebastian planned to make Candra believe the choice was not about the Nephilim, but simply a choice between Draven and him. He cared about another war erupting; the idea was repulsive to him, but not as much as bowing down to Draven. Draven was insane if he thought Sebastian would willingly allow him to take Candra. His rational mind knew he was acting crazy and that his absolute priority should be to protect human kind from the scourge that once threatened to wipe them out…but his rational mind wasn’t screaming loud enough.

  Candra moaned lightly and turned toward him, her soft lips brushing against his skin just the way she had done during the night. It sent a surge of heat through his body directly to his groin; his nerves vibrated under her mouth.

  Thank you, morning, Sebastian thought.

  While he froze with horror at the reaction she could stimulate, her hands slipped out and tenderly caressed his body from his waist up, over his chest and into the hair at the nape of his neck, pushing her fingers through it. Her body curved further toward Sebastian, pressing her barely covered breasts against him.

  He knew that wasn’t good. It was one thing to charm her from under Draven’s nose, but his own attraction for her was a mistake. He could deny it to himself all he wanted to, but it was there. Right there. The way his body reacted and the way he wanted to act on it wasn’t good.

  A few minutes later, Sebastian had managed to maneuver Candra into a more comfortable sleeping position and was leaving…okay, running away, but it was far better than the alternative as far as he was concerned.

  Lofi was waiting, complete with uniform and stern face at the end of the stairway. “Do you see this face?” she demanded, clearly agitated.

  “Excuse me?” Sebastian asked as he reached the bottom and put his jacket on.

  She slapped her hand down hard on the newel. “Covering up another ripped shirt will not make this go away!”

  He shrugged brusquely to settle the jacket on his shoulders. Sebastian could understand Lofi feeling a little left out. He knew he hadn’t been spending a lot of time with her
lately; they were more or less playing tag team, but he wasn’t going to let anyone tell him what he should or shouldn’t do.

  “You know, all I keep hearing from everyone is what won’t fix this, what won’t make it better. Why don’t one of you geniuses come up with something that will work? Right now, I don’t really know what I’m doing, but at least I’m doing something. Which is a whole lot more than the rest of you can say,” he shouted back at her angrily. It felt foreign to be shouting at Lofi, almost like an out-of-body experience. So much of his behavior was uncharacteristic these days.

  “This,” Lofi yelled, pointing at her face again.

  Sebastian was worried she would wake Candra, who’d had a late night and needed sleep.

  “It takes one hundred and seven muscles to frown and only four to smile.” Lofi reached out quickly, and before he had time to react, pinched his arm…hard.

  “Ouch!” he spat out. “That hurts.” For such a little thing, she had an amazingly strong grip. “As well as being a gross exaggeration.”

  “It’s over, Sebastian. If Draven has given her a choice, you have to let her take it.”

  “I don’t have to do anything,” he fired back stubbornly, wondering what in the Arch’s name was she suggesting. He couldn’t believe Lofi thought he would just allow Candra to walk away.

  Without warning she reached up and swiped him viciously across the head.

  “What the…”

  “Think, Sebastian…I tried to talk to you about all of this. I’ve tried to be nice about it. I’ve tried to get you to see sense.”

  “You really need to stop hitting me,” Sebastian cautioned her, rubbing his smarting scalp.

  “Are you really that obtuse? Do you think any of us want this? Do you think that turning your big browns on that girl will make it any easier when she has to go to him? Is she worth a war? Are you prepared to kill for her?” Lofi demanded irately. “Do you think she will thank you for it? Do you think she will love you for starting a war?”

  He could hear movement from upstairs, as well as from the rear of the house where the kitchen was situated. He guessed both Candra and Brie were awake by now and very likely listening to Lofi’s rant. The truth was that he had turned his feelings off. For so long Sebastian was able to lock everything away so he didn’t have to deal with guilt or loneliness. He’d had Brie and then Lofi, and there were always the others, the human women he kept company with from time to time…not forgetting Ananchel, of course, but this was different.

  It was so far removed from any other situation he had ever been in; it was like trying to compare a sparrow to an eagle. Candra was not meant to be with Draven. For the first time in his seemingly endless existence, Sebastian was sure of one thing and was trying to do something right—something that he felt was right down to his very bones—and he was being belted with obstacles at every turn. He didn’t want war, but he couldn’t walk away.

  “Why can’t you just admit you want her and that it’s sheer human jealously spurring you on?” Lofi narrowed her eyes accusingly.

  Sebastian heard a door upstairs open, and his stomach lurched. Lofi was about to ruin everything. Candra would know last night was nothing but an act to win her over. He approached Lofi and stood over her, bending his knees so he was eye-level.

  “Because I’m not human.” Sebastian paused and sucked a breath in through his clenched teeth. “You need to stay out of this,” he growled.

  Lofi boldly pursed her lips, refusing to back down. “I can’t. This involves all of us. You knew it would come to this. We all did. Now it has; there is nothing we can do. Have you even stopped to consider she may want him, that she may want to be with them?”

  Rage made his stomach clench, and his limbs stiffened. He felt his heart pound through the artery in his neck. He didn’t want to consider the possibility she may want Draven, because it wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. He heard footsteps pad across the floor above them and pause at the top of the stairs.

  Sebastian froze; thinking fast normally wasn’t a problem. If he could only go back in time a few years or even a few months, he would know exactly the right words to placate Lofi. Right now he couldn’t think of anything other than a promise to stay away from Candra, and that wasn’t going to happen.

  “Where are you going?” Lofi called after Sebastian as he stormed past her and out the door.

  “To find a way to make Draven change his mind,” he responded in a snarled whisper, not caring if Lofi heard or not.

  The only thing Candra got to hear clearly was the slamming of the door. When she peeked down the stairs, she saw Lofi shuffling out the door in a hurry.

  Candra dressed quickly, doing her very best to stay in the moment and not revert to dissecting what happened the night before with Draven or Sebastian, thinking there really was no point. These evolving feelings she was harboring toward Sebastian were futile. She wouldn’t and couldn’t allow the Watchers to believe the covenant was broken, but neither could she understand why Draven would want her.

  She made her way to the kitchen, following the scent of cooling oatmeal. The kitchen, like the other rooms in the house, only contained what was necessary. There were no gadgets or utensils lying around that would never be used. There were no impulse-and-later-regretted buys. Just simple, pale wood cabinets, a black marble worktop, a small herb garden box in the window for color, chrome appliances, and a range where Brie stood dishing up a bowl of sweetened oatmeal. The round table was set for two, and Candra noticed a white letter envelope sitting across the setting she presumed was for Brie. She sat down and sipped from the glass of juice in front of her.

  “I don’t suppose you know what that was about, do you?” Candra asked quietly as she fiddled with a napkin, rolling it through her fingers.

  Brie turned with two bowls in hand and sat at the other seat.

  “Hmm.” Candra sighed as the sweet aroma of cinnamon, brown sugar, and raisins hit. Her stomach let out a low gurgle, reminding her of how little she had eaten the day before. As far as she was concerned, the ultimate comfort foods were oatmeal and chicken noodle soup, though not at the same time—hot in winter and room temperature in summer. Her reaction always made Brie smile; today was no different.

  “I thought you could use the sugar after yesterday.” Brie smirked, ignoring her question.

  Candra picked up her spoon and dug into her sticky breakfast. “I’m guessing they were fighting over me,” she pushed, unwilling to just let it go.

  Brie didn’t answer, instead taking a mouthful of food and looking ahead, completely avoiding the question.

  Candra dropped her spoon by the side of the bowl sharply. “Okay, that is it. You can’t keep ignoring this or pretending it’s not happening. I just want you to talk me,” she pleaded. “I have some pretty big stuff going on, and I need you. I need your help and your guidance, and instead of giving it to me, you are just disappearing into a shell.”

  Very calmly, Brie laid her spoon down, took a sip of juice, and dabbed at her lips. Then she interlaced her fingers on the table in front of her, keeping her expression carefully guarded. All the while Candra stared at her, dumbfounded. It was like looking at someone she didn’t even know. She wanted to shake Brie and could feel her frustration ready to explode. Her heart began to race, and she clenched the napkin tighter in her hands, ready to throw it down and storm out. Until suddenly Brie let out a long weary sigh, and her shoulders drooped.

  “You’re right,” she agreed in a small voice, catching Candra a little off guard. “You are absolutely right. I’ve been hiding, hoping I can make this easier on myself when I should have been thinking of you.”

  “It’s okay,” Candra reassured her, reaching out to lay her hand over Brie’s. At the same time she mentally kicked herself because it wasn’t okay; it was as far from okay as anything could possibly get. But her response was a reflex.

  Brie patted Candra’s hand with her own softly and offered a weak smile. “No, Candra. You’re r
ight. It’s not okay. I haven’t been here for you, and it stops today. You tell me what you want to know or what you need me to do, and I’ll do it.”

  Candra felt a small twist in her stomach. This was not the strong confident Brie she knew. But at least she was nearer to it.

  Candra leaned forward, placing her elbows on the table and raking her fingers through her hair. “I’m confused,” she admitted. “I don’t understand why my father would do this, why you would. Draven told me I was hidden to protect me from Sebastian. Is that true? You left him. You left Gabe too. I would have to be oblivious not to pick up the vibes between you two.” She looked up to Brie hopefully, waiting for an answer.

  Brie smiled a little and reached forward to pull Candra’s hand from her hair, and handed her the spoon sitting by her bowl. “I’m so sorry, Candra. But you know the truth is I hoped we would never have to tell you any of this. It was all so simple. Your father loved your mother. They had a sweet brief affair, and you were the result. Payne didn’t tell me everything. He promised he would when the time was right, said he was protecting me in case it went wrong. The only thing I knew was that you had to be protected…at all costs.”

  Candra felt a sharp sting at the back of her eyes. This wasn’t going to get her any nearer to answers at all, but she could see Brie was telling the truth. Brie didn’t know any more.

  “You trusted him enough to give up everything, when you didn’t know the reason?”

  Brie nodded.

  “Sebastian, in the hospital, you thought he would kill me?”