by Carol Oates
She sucked in a deep breath and blew the air out through pursed lips, pulling herself up to him at the same time. “Why do you make me crazy?” she asked contritely and nuzzled into his neck.
“Because you love me.”
Sebastian had showered, and the scent of death and Guinness no longer clung to him the way it did to her. Instead, he smelled of soap, spices, and heat. His damp hair brushed against her forehead. In moments like this, his embrace made her feel secure and loved unconditionally. On other occasions, it was much easier to doubt herself and doubt him. Watchers perceived an innate goodness in her that Candra wasn’t sure of. When given a choice between love and war, she was very much tempted to choose war. Sebastian made no secret of the rage in his heart, a rage she knew could easily destroy him.
“I do,” she murmured, shifting to sit across his lap and linking her fingers around his neck. As always, it brought on a strange little flutter in her stomach. Loving Sebastian was one of those things that was never meant to happen. It had blindsided both of them. If there were two people in the world less likely to fall in love, it was Sebastian and Candra.
She pressed her lips to his quickly, weaving her fingers up into his soft-as-silk hair. One of his hands tightened on her thigh, and the other slid up her spine, stopping between her shoulder blades where his fingers spread out wide.
She pulled back and giggled when Sebastian’s lips chased her with a playful pout. “I wasn’t finished.”
“I haven’t brushed my teeth,” she told him, making a show of covering her mouth when she spoke. “Morning breath.”
“It’s eleven at night.” He pushed forward.
Candra applied pressure against his shoulders, blocking his advance. “And I need a shower. I smell like an Irish man.”
Breath left her in a whoosh followed by a squeal as Sebastian spun her around and pinned her to the bed beneath him. His full weight pressed down on her, giving Candra a comfort she didn’t fully understand. He made her feel protected, hidden away and small. She shivered all the way to her toes. Sebastian would die to keep her safe if he had to.
“Who would have thought I’d find the smell of an Irish man so appealing.” He breathed the words close to her ear and then glided his hot lips to the throbbing artery just below.
Candra felt the warm, grainy flesh of his tongue peek out and swirl in a small circle over her skin. She bit down on the inside of her cheek to hold back the whimpering noise she was sure would escape her lips otherwise. She squirmed below him until she was breathless, and he dragged his fingers down the length of her forearms to secure her wrists by the side of her head.
“You fight me on everything,” Sebastian reprimanded her, slipping his fingers between hers and clasping them firmly. “When will you ever give in quietly?” His eyes blazed and flickered to her mouth.
Just to tease him further, Candra brushed her tongue across her bottom lip to moisten it. “Never,” she insisted, fighting the smile threatening to break through. Their relationship had been this way from the beginning, always teasing and taunting. He was equally as stubborn. “You know you love it,” she finished.
Candra sensed his mood shift, and his hold on her hands loosened. Sebastian’s moods had a habit of turning on a pinhead, and the distance from playful to intensely serious seemed non-existent at times.
“I love you.” His promise came from somewhere deep inside him, somewhere he had sworn he didn’t know existed until she’d unlocked it.
Strands of his uncombed hair fell forward, skimming the front of his ears, touching the first of the three raised pink lines. The fresh wounds marred his beautiful skin, further highlighted by the perfect golden halo around his face. Candra remembered thinking it was not a human boy’s hair from the very first time she’d touched it.
“Have you even the vaguest conception of what it would do to me if anything were to happen to you?” His tone was laced with the edge Candra had become increasing aware of over the last few days. An ever-present anger and guilt had festered inside Sebastian since the war. The death and destruction he and the others reaped scarred him irreparably. He claimed he didn’t deserve good in his life, even though he would make all the same choices again in a heartbeat. Sebastian was a walking contradiction.
“Nothing is going to happen to me. I have you, Draven, and the other Watchers.” Candra twisted one hand free and swept his hair back from his face, curling her fingers through the strands. She lifted enough to sweep her lips over one of the marks, tasting the lingering metallic flavor of dried blood on him. Watchers couldn’t heal themselves completely, but the deep scratches would have diminished a little if he had tried. “When all this is finally over, we can…”
Candra’s words died in her throat. Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. She couldn’t find the will to continue with the promises she wanted to make, that they would be together or have a normal, happy life…that they would grow old together. Sebastian would never grow old. A mortal wound could kill him, just like her father, if there was no angel around to heal him, but Sebastian was a soul incarnate. Unlike Candra, there was nothing to release when he died. From dust he came, and to dust he shall return, she thought to herself inconsolably. His fate was one more reason to ask questions about the green-eyed stranger who’d claimed to be Ivy. What if even a semblance of truth existed in any of what she’d said?
“She told me I can send you back.”
“She’s a liar. You can’t trust anything that comes out of her mouth,” Sebastian said without hesitation. His fingers flinched against hers almost indiscernibly.
“You’re lying,” Candra stated and pushed him off her.
Sebastian rolled away from her across the bed, one foot insistently tapping on the floor. He stretched out, and his T-shirt pulled up when he scrubbed his face roughly. Despite herself, Candra’s eyes strayed to his taut stomach, where the barest sprinkling of golden hair formed a line below his navel. She swallowed, mentally slapping herself for letting his physical beauty distract her from her train of thought and reminding her that she was also still a young woman in a new flush of love and lust. She didn’t want to lose Sebastian.
“How can you remember her when you don’t remember anything else from before?” She sat up and adjusted her shirt. It was long enough to skim the top of her thighs, but she still felt exposed, both physically and metaphorically. She could feel herself morphing into the stereotypical needy and jealous girl she hated.
“I never said I don’t remember anything.” His voice was flat and unemotional, like a stranger speaking to her, and reminded her how fast Sebastian could cut her off from what he was thinking. “There are hints, feelings—”
She snorted and bounced up from the bed with no intentions of pleading for answers—those days were long gone. Her confidence in herself may have been at an all-time low, but if Sebastian was unwilling to provide it, she knew exactly where to find the truth.
“What?” he grunted, openly annoyed now. He lowered his hand and glared at her.
“Nothing,” Candra muttered.
He groaned deeply, a sound that she would have found unattractive from any other source. From Sebastian, it sounded like velvet dragged across her skin and made the tiny hairs rise up on her forearms. Every part of her longed for him.
“I’m trying here—really I am. I’ve never been in a relationship; I’ve never cared about someone the way I care about you. I’m not good at sharing or emotional stuff.” He paused and groaned again, his eyebrows bunching together. “I’m trying.”
Candra stepped into her pants and paused with her fingers on the fastening at her waist. “You had a thing with her, didn’t you?” Jealously riddled her voice, but she made no effort to hide it. It seemed like a moot point, considering the conversation. It was too much like a vicious cosmic joke to be a weapon created to destroy her boyfriend’s ex-lover…if that thing was her nemesis. “That thing…she’s one of your little harem girls.”
Sebastian barked out a l
augh before bending over to retrieve his boots. “Harem girls? Are you being serious right now?”
Candra held her breath and nodded stiffly. It didn’t prevent the muffled sound that came from her mouth, betraying her. It sounded distinctly like she’d just disagreed with herself. Wow, I’m totally pathetic. What the hell am I doing?
“You are ridiculous.”
“Am I?” she challenged. Yes.
The muscles in his forearms rippled and flexed as he jerked his laces. “Yes, you are. You’re being paranoid and jealous.”
“Well, that’s rich coming from the guy who unrepentantly stalked me for months.”
With one last swing of his arms for momentum, he leapt to his feet. He kept his expression guarded and his jaw so tight, the tendons in his throat protruded from his skin when he swallowed. Candra’s eyes flickered to his hands. He visibly applied extra effort to keep from curling them into fists. Sebastian’s fingers were rigid to the point of looking painful. Candra winced. She wanted to stop, but her wrath was a freight train without brakes.
She wasn’t angry at Sebastian; she was angry at herself because she would rather he remain forsaken here with her than return to heaven. Who does that? Who would selfishly deny heaven to the one they love? Clearly, she had to be heartless and as much of a walking contradiction as Sebastian.
“To keep you safe.” His voice was louder than usual, and Candra knew they were back to the edge again. “I thought we were past all this. I want to be with you.”
“Then stop lying to me. Tell me you don’t think about going home when this is finished, if we live. Isn’t that what you all hope for?” Tears itched at the corners of her eyes. Candra wiped them away with the back of her hand, ignoring the slamming pain of her heart hammering in her chest. Every inch of her wanted him to deny it.
“You’re impossible…” He waved his hand between them. “This is impossible.”
He might as well have punched her in the chest for the pain his words caused. Candra sucked in a breath and froze as fear rattled her torturously. “Us? You want to give up on us?”
Sebastian’s eyes widened, startled. He brought his hand up and swept it through his hair. “No, of course not.”
Candra’s shoulders dropped.
“I mean this conversation.”
“Tell me who she is.”
Sebastian lowered his eyes and massaged tension from the back of his neck. It was almost automatic for Candra: she wanted to reach out for him and made herself resist.
“I’m not hiding anything. I said I would tell you everything, and I will. I’m trying to protect you. I’m trying to give you time to heal. Don’t you see that?”
“Don’t you see I need this? This will be my fight as much as yours, and I need to know what I’m fighting against.”
“I didn’t sleep with Lilith. That thing hasn’t crossed my mind for thousands of years. I thought she was gone forever.” His tone softened and strained. Deep frown lines creased his forehead, and his cheeks flushed with color.
Candra pressed her lips together to stop the tears building in her eyes from overflowing. It took every ounce of will she possessed to drag her eyes away from the brutal anguish in his. She made her way over to the leather armchair that, apart from the lighting, was his only concession to modern furnishing. The soft leather didn’t creak when she sat down and tucked her hands underneath her thighs.
“How do I explain a feeling, something I know to be true but can’t rationalize why?” he asked in a hushed voice.
Candra met his depthless eyes, eyes she could stare into forever and they would still never give up all the secrets he kept locked away. “Do you love me?”
His eyebrows drew down, but the heat of his gaze melted any residual anger instantly. Whatever came before or whatever the future held for them, right now, they belonged to each other as much as any two people could.
“I love you.”
Candra smiled. “That is exactly how you explain a feeling. Just tell me.”
He blinked, and the muscle jumped when he swallowed. Candra was sure he understood, turning her attention to her knees. She didn’t know what her reaction might be to whatever he was about to say and didn’t trust herself not to display every emotion on her face.
Her eyes remained lowered when he continued in a voice so quiet and fast that she had to concentrate to keep up.
“Everything from before is so unclear, but this feeling I have about Lilith is so sharp. She can’t be here.”
She peeked up for a fraction of a second when he paused and pinched the bridge of his nose before continuing.
“She isn’t a Watcher or a human. Lilith is something else completely. You might call her a failed experiment. She and her kind existed before humans, but they had too much knowledge, too much awareness of life. If you look at humans as the Arch’s children, her kind were the rebellious teens so obsessed with their own rapture, they almost destroyed everything. The Arch started over, a clean slate, all except for Lilith, the first of them. Lilith was already strong enough to evade death, and soon, she realized she could sustain herself by absorbing human souls.
“She walked the Earth, but she was unable to procreate and remained alone except for the souls degrading and rotting inside her. The Arch instilled one of the highest-ranking angels to destroy her, but she couldn’t be destroyed, so she was banished…along with all the souls she consumed.”
“Who was the angel?”
“I don’t know. For all I know, it could have been me, could have been Draven… Among Watchers, the story of Lilith is the equivalent of dark folklore. What we know is gleamed from collective hints of remembrance. None of us really knows. Until today, I wasn’t sure I even believed the story at all.”
She glanced up. Sebastian’s thumb and forefinger rubbed his closed eyelids.
“How was she banished? How do we get rid of her?”
“We can’t. She can’t be here. She is supposed to be gone a thousand lifetimes ago. If I had thought for a second any of it was real… If such a thing as true evil exists, Lilith is it.” He chuckled humorlessly. “I never considered the possibility, not once. She’s—”
“She’s a demon,” Candra finished for him.
Sebastian’s mouth opened as if to say something, but nothing came out. He stared at Candra blankly, waiting for her to speak.
“Why did you let her go? She was there, right in front of you.”
“It’s not that simple,” he said. “She is only part of the puzzle. We need to know how she is here. You have to understand, Candra, that if the stories are true, Lilith is not just a demon. She is corruption.”
An icy chill slithered down Candra’s spine at the deadly tone of Sebastian’s voice.
“She is a temptress, Candra. She will try every way she can to win you over. She will try to separate us. We can’t let her. We have to figure this out together.”
“Exactly,” Candra warned him. “It has to be together. You can’t keep anything from me.” She stood up and took two steps toward him.
He nodded solemnly but made no attempt to approach her or leave.
“Is this it? Is she the thing I’m supposed to fight?”
He remained silent, his eyes roaming over her face as if committing every tiny detail to memory, and finally, the awkwardness began to stretch on. Candra wanted to crawl back under the covers. However, it didn’t seem like a proactive thing to do when the situation between them still felt unresolved. There were still so many unanswered questions.
He pulled in a deep, shuddering breath and shook his head. “I honestly don’t know. I swear I’ll kill her a million times over before I let her hurt you.”
Candra noticed he looked tired. It was unusual since Sebastian rarely slept, and when he did, he seldom slept deeply. She could count on one hand the occasions she’d seen him at rest and still have fingers to spare.
He had told her that every life he took fractured his heart a little more. He’d tried to convin
ce her that he was the tempest, and as long as she was with him, she was merely sitting in the eye of the storm. He had warned her he couldn’t be her shelter or her protector, that eventually she would see him for what he was—a murderer. Another tiny piece of Sebastian chipped away right in front of Candra’s eyes as they both realized he intended to kill again.
“We need to go.”
“Go where?” Candra asked, scooting over to the side of the chair and placing her feet on the bare floor and standing.
“Back to the townhouse.”
Candra looked up at him, confused by him taking her back to the place Lilith had managed to slip by her guards. “What? Can’t I just stay here with you?”
Sebastian smiled and scratched his temple with his index finger. His brow wrinkled when his eyebrows rose and disappeared behind his ruffled blond hair. “Okay, you and I know that isn’t going to happen.”
“Brie,” they both said at the same time.
Brie had firmly placed her foot down on sleeping arrangements. Sebastian and Candra hadn’t spent a night in the same bed since the ball. In fact, they hadn’t spent a night inside the same house. Brie had relegated him to guarding Candra from the rooftops surrounding the townhouse.
Candra sighed and turned away from him, sitting on the end of the bed. “I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I miss you, and I’m not sure I want to stay there after what happened.”
She felt the bed shift, and Sebastian’s legs appeared either side of her. His strong arms circled her waist and pulled her toward his chest. She let her head loll back to his shoulder and closed her eyes, opening them again quickly when she saw green eyes peering at her from blackness.
Sebastian’s lips pressed against her hair lightly as he spoke. “I’ll talk to Brie. This isn’t about you and me anymore. It’s about keeping you safe.”