by Carol Oates
“All this time, we’ve been looking to the Arch for answers to what we are, what our existence means. All this time, we should have been looking closer to home. We should have been looking at ourselves. We should have been asking why we did what we did. Such a wasted opportunity. This planet is done for. Its inhabitants are nothing but rotting pieces of flesh now, just like us. We were never meant to come here. Look what we’ve done.”
“What we’ve done?” Ananchel demanded incredulously. “The Arch is responsible for this. If we had been made equal, if we had been given what they were given…if he had loved us as much…”
Draven kept his main focus on the window but caught her movement in his peripheral view. Ananchel’s hand slid backward over the sleek polished wood and dragged something into her grip: his sterling silver letter opener.
“No. You’ve never accepted the truth. We left. We made the choice to give up heaven…for what? Something we couldn’t possibly have. Something that wasn’t created for us. We wanted it all. We carried a part of something into a world where it was never meant to be.” He applied too much pressure to the window, and a fracture rattled the glass, spreading a crack like a fault line through ice.
In a flash, Ananchel was beside him, yanking his arm back and forcing him to look at her. “What are you doing?” she challenged furiously. “This is our world now. We existed first. We were the perfect creation, and then we were tossed away like rancid milk. With the Arch gone, we can do anything. We can go or stay; it’s all ours for the choosing. Don’t you dare give up on me because that little pipsqueak went and got herself killed.”
Draven dropped his eyes. He saw her fist wrapped around the letter opener and held back a little. She thinks I won’t notice her weapon.
“What have you done, Ananchel?”
“What do you mean?” she asked with an uncharacteristic tremble in her voice. Her fingers twitched around the silver.
Draven lifted his eyes to her. “All this time…all this time, you stood by me, and you never understood me.”
His massive plumage burst forth from his back, spreading wide and casting a giant shadow over Ananchel. She stepped back unsteadily. Draven expected her to attack immediately and protect herself from his wrath, but she hesitated. Her jaw set defiantly, and her own wings unfurled to their terrifying width.
“Don’t be a fool, Draven.”
The hairs on the back of his neck rose, and a vengeful fire sizzled in his belly. Something vaguely reminiscent of a memory taunted him, a fuzzy echo, like a radio station that hadn’t been tuned correctly. He recalled the feeling inside him, bottled lightening straining to escape. In his memory, he had never struck down another being in anger, only ever in retaliation. Something inside him now convinced Draven that this was not quite true. Maybe once, long ago, he had been the Arch’s hand too. When his eyes locked on Ananchel’s, she confirmed it. Why else would he see fear there?
“She was the temptation you hoped would blind me to you,” he spat. “You hoped I would be so distracted by my emotions that I wouldn’t see how absolutely you’ve been polluted by the same darkness as Lilith.”
His wings flexed out wide and seemed to expand until the tips brushed the walls on either side of the room. Draven felt their enormous weight shudder and understood that what they were here was only a shadow of their true being. The energy pumping in every cell of his body was never meant to be inside a terrestrial form.
What have we done? They had fought a war, lost brothers and sisters, and it was only now that Draven understood. The Arch hadn’t denied them humanity as they’d always believed. Their angelic nature was a beautiful gift, and like ungrateful children, they had selfishly wanted more. The Nephilim and all the destruction they brought with them was the price.
Ananchel stepped back again. Her jaw jutted out, but her eyes watered, further enforcing that she knew what was coming. She had seen this before. Sebastian had told him the truth: Ananchel remembered heaven. The bizarre part was that he could almost swear there was a part of him remembering it too. Perhaps it was the same part that connected them.
“Why?” he thundered, his voice so loud that the sound reverberated off every wall. The stained glass behind his head jangled in its frame. His heart pounded, and blood roared in his ears.
Ananchel flinched.
“Tell me.”
The fracture in the glass spread swiftly, creeping outward and upward with a grating noise, like the sound of nails on a chalkboard, until there was nothing to hold it together any longer. It shattered, falling away from the frame, showering Draven in droplets of rainbow crystals.
She rolled her shoulders back, still holding on to some of the bravado he recognized in her. Taking another step back, Ananchel pulled her wings in to rest along her back, the slick red feathers framing the black almost in a heart shape—a black heart. “I did it for you. All for you. You don’t remember what it was like for you before, always the runner-up, always second best to Sebastian. I wanted more for you.”
“And so you had me convince them that this was better.” Draven held his arms out wide. Tears of rage stung his eyes. His guts twisted, faced with his own inadequacies. He had led them out of heaven, but she had been the whisperer in his ear. “What about what I wanted? Did I ask for any of this, or did you make the decision for me?”
She didn’t answer.
“You knew, didn’t you? You knew the children would be monsters, corrupted and evil just like Lilith but with the blood of angels in their veins. You knew they would be unspeakable. We were never meant to create life; we weren’t made to. Just like humans can’t sprout wings, we were never meant to create life.”
“Why?” Ananchel asked defiantly. “Why shouldn’t we? Who was he to decide? Who was he to judge us?”
“He is everything,” Draven raged.
Ananchel stood her ground but blinked rapidly. Tendons protruded painfully from Draven’s neck, and veins popped from his straining forearms, twisting across the backs of his clenched fists. White-hot fury rolled through him in waves, receding and rising with each harsh breath. The sound of his feathers rustled in his ears with each violent shudder of his body. He saw the direction of this conversation. What Ananchel had done. Despite knowing it wasn’t his place to condemn, he couldn’t help himself. It was weakness, but it was there nonetheless: the desire to judge consumed him.
“He was everything,” she corrected him with a sly curl to her top lip. Tentatively, she took a step forward, hesitated, and then took another. It reminded Draven of a child approaching an animal for the first time. Concern creased at the corner of her tightened eyes.
Draven was still fully aware of the weapon in her grip. Never in his imagination would he have believed she would attack him, yet here they stood. Neither of them would ever be the same.
“Think about it, Draven. The Arch is gone now. What does it matter anymore? We need to look to the future.” She continued taking delicate, careful steps. Her head dipped slightly as she looked up to Draven from under her eyelashes. Her hair seemed to move at odds with the room, catching the late daylight now flooding into the window from behind Draven. She was lava moving down a mountain, ready to consume anything and everything that got in her way. Draven no longer doubted that included him. “No one knows. We should be thinking of Lilith now. She is the one that deserves to pay. She took Candra from you.”
“What about Sebastian?” he growled out bitterly when she was barely two feet away from him.
Ananchel paused and sighed. “Really, Draven, will it be so much of a hardship for you to rid yourself of Sebastian?”
Draven bristled.
“He has always been in your way, always. We can move on from this. Think of what we will be—rulers of all heaven and earth.” Her tone had shifted a little.
Draven noted the quiver in her voice because he didn’t calm as she’d expected him to. Finally, she stopped completely, just within reaching distance. Ananchel’s shoulders dropped as she
sensed he wouldn’t side with her on this issue, and her eyes fell to the ground, her hair shielding her face from him.
It had to end now. Draven couldn’t allow this to go on. It seemed like forever since the war, forever since they’d been trapped and cut off from everything they once were and knew. To realize it had all been a fool’s errand was almost more than Draven could bear. To realize it was his closest confidante who had betrayed them all was more than he could stomach.
“Please, Draven, with the Arch gone and now Candra, you need me. You can’t turn your back on me.” Begging did not become Ananchel. It made the typhoon raging in his blood swirl fast.
“You betrayed me. You betrayed your own kind and your creator. You allowed jealously to rot everything good inside you.”
She stared at him for a moment, her eyes pleading, and Draven wondered if she expected him to say something else or to take his words back.
“If that’s how you feel, Draven, you leave me no choice—”
Before the last syllable had left her lips, Ananchel’s eyes and arm lifted. It happened in less than a fraction of a second. Draven saw the darkness inside her, her black heart shining through her eyes, churning and weaving with its towering flames of hate and rage. A flare of light slashed toward his chest, the blade in her hand so fast, the metal blurred. Her wings flared out once more, creating a blast of wind. She meant to kill him, but he was ready.
Draven’s long fingers circled her wrist and squeezed, wrenching it back. She dropped the letter opener, and it clanged loudly on the hardwood floor. At the same time, Draven lifted his knee high and planted his foot in her midsection, pitching her back with a brutal kick.
Winded by his attack, Ananchel soared backward across the room at unimaginable speed and crashed into a framed painting of golden wings rising though blue-white clouds. The canvas ripped, wood splintered, and glass shattered, demolishing the image beyond recognition. She landed on the ground in a flourish of twirling feathers, immediately shot into the air again, and flew at Draven. He swatted her away with the back of his hand as if she were no more than an annoying insect. The space around him seemed to vibrate, as if shuddering at his ire. Ananchel somersaulted in time to kick off the wall and crash into him again before he caught his breath. She clawed at his face like a crazed harpy, tearing long, jagged scratch marks into his cheeks.
This time, he struggled to get a grip on her squirming form.
“You’re a fool,” she seethed. “You could have had it all.”
He caught her by the waist and spun her around, trapping her wings against his chest. Draven circled one arm around her body and held the other under her chin as she struggled mercilessly against him. They may have been twins, but her strength was no match for his; it never had been, even when they sparred. Now he understood why: Ananchel had lost her faith in herself long ago. Grasping at power from other sources made her weak. She lacked the ability to center herself. All this time, he’d thought her so special because she’d carried her power into this world. He hadn’t seen it for what it was: a symptom of the sickness taking her over, a torment she couldn’t escape. She craved power, and she craved suffering. That had sustained her.
Draven opened his hand wide over her throat, and power seized his body until his heart galloped and his lungs might as well have been encased in an iron cage. Ananchel grunted with each straining movement, attempting to wrench herself free of his grip. Draven became vaguely aware of the heated shivers caressing his skin. She had resorted to using her gifts on him in her desperation, something she had never tried before. It made his heart ache, and a dry, guttural sound escaped his lips, shaking the room. He wanted to fall to his knees and cry. His instinct told him to beg for mercy for both Ananchel and himself. His knees twitched and caused a painful spasm in his calf muscles. The rage didn’t protect him from the loss of his twin. He knew there was no one there to hear his pleas, not now. The only thing left to Draven was to hand down her punishment and hope it wasn’t too late to turn things around for the rest of them.
“It will be over quickly,” he whispered into her ear, tasting his own salty tears on his tongue.
“No,” she howled, digging her nails into his forearm across her chest. Dark rivets of blood flowed from the wounds. Ananchel used all her strength against him to force him back with her wings, no doubt searching for even the smallest space to use as advantage.
“Shush,” he hushed her. She lacked his undiluted power; her gift lay in other areas. “You still don’t understand, do you? It’s so obvious. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”
Her struggles eased, and Draven chuckled blackly. It was just like Ananchel, that even when believing herself to be so close to her death, her curiosity nevertheless demanded she learn what he meant.
“Candra is not like the other Neph. I could never figure out why she’s a magnet for our kind. What called to so many around the globe.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Ananchel said, trying to shrug him off.
Draven recalled his first meeting with Candra, how he had felt unconsciously connected to her in a way impossible to put his finger on. Something in her called to him and him to her. At the time, he imagined it like those people who divine water using nothing more than a tree branch. There was something inside her that he couldn’t see or touch, but it drove him to her. He recognized her.
“The Arch isn’t gone, Ananchel. He’s just been hiding and waiting for Lilith to make her move. Waiting for us to figure it out.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She is a vessel, Ananchel. Beneath a human soul in a Nephilim body, the light resides inside her.”
Ananchel froze, and for a moment, they stood, still as statues. Entwined like a beautiful creation of a talented artist, the fallen angel in the arms of the avenger.
With Ananchel subdued, Draven acted quickly. His hands retracted and slipped under her arms, curling under her wings and gripping tightly at the place where they connected to her back. As if a switch flicked inside her, she suddenly came back to life.
“No,” she shrieked, desperately wrangling to get away. She had realized her fate.
Draven closed his eyes, pressed his teeth into the flesh of his bottom lip, and then he wrenched the joint.
The sound of ripping flesh and the crunch of shattered bones blended with seemingly endless screams. For a moment, Draven couldn’t decipher where his screams ended and Ananchel’s began. It felt as though his throat might tear apart, and an agonized burning sensation lanced though his own wings. He saw a bright rainbow kaleidoscope of colors behind his eyelids and wondered for a split second if it was delirium. As soon as Ananchel’s body got over the initial shock, she kicked into action again.
Once Draven’s grip slackened, Ananchel crumpled to the ground and began shuffling away from him. He stood with her two wings, which immediately started to harden. Draven watched with utter fascination as each feather turned crisp. It spread over the amputated wings the way heat sizzled away the edges of paper. Piece by piece, they evaporated to nothing before his eyes.
“How could you?” Ananchel demanded. Angry tears streaked down her reddened cheeks. Pieces of black and red feathers stuck to the gaping open wounds that covered the upper part of her back. Pieces of cracked bone poked out of her shredded skin, catching her tangled hair as she whipped her head to him. Blood pooled on the floor around the pathetic sight.
“You left me no choice, Ananchel,” he told her. It was difficult to restrain the break in his voice. Numbness crept over him, starting at the top of his head and trickling downward like ice water. It took a second for him to notice her reaching for something and another moment for him to react.
Ananchel fumbled in the pocket of her leather trousers and pulled out the small black stone. It wasn’t difficult for Draven to wrestle it from her; her strength depleted with each second that passed. He had never removed the wings of an angel, at least not in his active memory, but Draven k
new the mechanics. He hadn’t expected the dimness within himself that accompanied it. He could only put it down to the connection between himself and Ananchel fading.
“It was this or kill you.” He forced out the words as he tossed the curleax out of her reach. “I have to finish this, and I can’t have you interfering.”
Ananchel slumped to the ground. “Then kill me. I can’t exist like this.” She reached over her shoulder in disgust. “A half thing, without you.” Her mouth curled downward.
“I won’t kill you, Ananchel, as much as you deserve it.” Draven held his own stone over her injured back. Ananchel attempted to swat it out of his hand, but he moved faster and reconsidered healing her bloody wounds. “I won’t heal you, either, but I’m sure you will find someone who will. Your wings will grow back eventually, only because you didn’t willingly give them up, but I have severed the connection between us forever.”
“Let me bleed out then,” she pleaded. “Let me die.”
Draven paused. The emptiness inside him swelled. He looked down at Ananchel’s prone form, contorted by rage and fear. Despite his earlier fury, the only emotion he felt toward her now was pity. Death would be a release, and he wouldn’t give her that. There had been enough killing, and Draven would avoid more if he could. He closed his eyes and felt his desire to heal her tingle through his veins.
“I will kill myself,” Ananchel said blackly. “I will not allow anyone but you to heal me.”
“That will be your choice, Ananchel. I won’t make the decision for you.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
CANDRA’S EYES WERE GUMMED SHUT, the way eyes can sometimes get after sleeping for too long. Groggily, she forced them open and closed them again straight away. Through her eyelids, she recognized the golden brightness of a summer day and noticed how it heated her face. She lay there a moment, allowing her senses to adjust to her surroundings. The sweet fragrance of newly mown grass and summer flowers engulfed her. Insects she couldn’t identify buzzed overhead. Candra flattened her hand to the ground at her side, ran her fingers over the lush ground covering, and breathed in great big gulps of crystal clean air.