Iridescent (Ember 2)

by Carol Oates

  Instead of opening her eyes, Candra squeezed them shut tighter, waiting for the rest of her body to come back to life. She wasn’t at all surprised that her vision stayed with her, every tiny detail, crystal clear. It dawned on her that this must have been what it was like for her father…a sort of lucid dream place where the Arch shared the secrets of the universe on an apparently need-to-know basis.

  She shivered, and a large hand slid under her shoulder, urging her up. More hands wrapped around her ankles and between them, her two puppeteers shifting her to a sitting position.

  “Candra,” Draven said softly. He didn’t speak her name to draw her attention, or to check why the lights appeared to be on inside her head with no one home. He spoke her name as if confirming it to himself, a secret he meant only the two of them to share.

  “Why isn’t she coming round?” Lofi asked, with a particular air of irritation reserved for when she didn’t get her own way.

  Candra imagined Lofi wanting to wake her sooner. The welcome, cool touch of fresh water touched her parched lips and dribbled over her chin when she didn’t part them quickly enough. Draven’s hand remained on the back of her neck under her hair, and his thumb ran back and forth across her hairline. She shivered again and swallowed the water. It spread downward, the cool diffusing through her body before it reached her stomach.

  Candra opened her eyes, met by blurred pools of navy and gold close to her face. Draven let out a relieved breath, and warmth, rich and comforting, fanned across her skin.

  “Welcome back.” He smiled at her.

  Candra sensed the others around them, but all she could see was Draven’s face, his perfectly smooth golden complexion complemented by the slight rose hue over sharp cheekbones. His thick black eyebrows pulled down, and long curling lashes batted as his eyes roamed over her, searching for any sign of recognition from her. Her gaze fixed on his mouth, noticing the color deepen.

  He wants to kiss me. One look into his eyes confirmed it. His pupils dilated noticeably. She wasn’t sure if she saw passion or relief, but whatever it was made her heart leap into her throat.

  Candra shook her head and pulled back, bringing the rest of the room into view. Not a room exactly—a vestry. She recognized the long, arched, stained glass windows. They weren’t wide enough for a person to fit through but wide enough that she could see the blackness beyond them. They were in the chapel of Saint Francis.

  “Are you okay?” she asked Brie, pulling away from Draven and ignoring her raging heartbeat. She had too much to wrap her head around before dealing with the entire attraction situation between the two of them, and learning about the Arch complicated things. The idea of either Sebastian or Draven having feelings for her felt wrong.

  “Am I okay?” Brie half laughed and sat down beside her. She recommenced with checking Candra’s temperature. Grime coated her make-up-free cheeks, and her eyes were bloodshot with dark shadows in the corners by her nose. A long gash running from her ear to under her chin had crusted over, as though the wound had started healing. The blue sweater Brie wore displayed the Saint Francis’s crest over her right breast, a shield with a book under rays of light to symbolize learning and enlightenment. Underneath it, the words Agere Sequitur Credere—action follows belief. Candra had never thought about it before—that a person acted accordingly to what they believed themselves capable of doing.

  It’s only by endeavoring to touch the heavens that we understand it was within our reach the entire time. Candra heard the voice of the Arch inside her head and understood. It was up to them now—up to her. The weapon the Arch intended was never really her; she was only the container for the real weapon against Lilith—the Arch. Her mother had changed all that. Free will put the power in her hands, and she became the weapon, capable of defeating Lilith and sending those Watchers who wanted it home. As long as the Arch remained inside her, she was calling the shots.

  “Candra.” Brie snapped her back, scowling. She’d zoned out for a moment.

  “I’m fine. I’m just confused. Why are we here? What happened?” She peeked around the room, seeing Lofi, Draven, Brie, and a dark-haired woman Candra presumed was the owner of the voice she hadn’t recognized earlier. She instantly knew the woman had been a Watcher. Her age gave her away as fallen. “Where’s Sebastian?”

  Lofi stepped forward and kneeled in front of Candra. Like the others, she appeared disheveled, her clothes crumpled and dirty. Her guarded expression immediately alerted Candra that something big happened during her interlude with the Arch.

  “How long was I out?” she asked, flashing her eyes around.

  “A little over a day and a half. Nathaniel healed you when he and Brie found you downstairs in the gallery, but we couldn’t wake you. We’re here because it’s safe…for now. People are holing up in churches all over the city. We’ve put blessings everywhere we can. Lilith can’t enter. There’re Watchers placed everywhere we think might help. Sebastian too…we think.”

  “You think?”

  “He’ll be here by morning.”

  “Why do I get the feeling you’re sugar-coating something? Spit it out.”

  Lofi sighed. “That thing that attacked you—”

  “Philip.”

  “Philip,” Lofi corrected herself. “He was only one of thousands. They’ve been systematically moving across the city. People are dying.”

  “What?” Candra’s face creased, shocked and revolted at the idea. Her stomach turned over. It must have been almost two days since she’d eaten, and her head should have cleared by now, but she had to concentrate to keep her mind from wandering off again. Was this Lilith’s plan to force her into conceding? “We have to do something.”

  Candra realized she’d almost given in too soon. If the Arch could defeat Lilith, and the Arch was inside her, then she could…She stood abruptly and swayed. Everyone reached for her at the same time. All except Draven; he stayed back. She shook her head, hoping to clear some of the cobwebs. Her eyes flickered to him. His shoulders were rigid, the skin on his hands taut and white over his knuckles.

  “You need food,” the woman she didn’t know said. “I’ll go get some.” She spun quickly and moved toward the vestry’s arched door. Passing Draven, she clapped her hand against his shoulder and leaned in to whisper something Candra couldn’t hear. Draven’s lip twitched at the corner, but otherwise, his expression remained neutral.

  “Wait,” Candra called after her and stood again, allowing Lofi to support her a little.

  The woman stopped and looked back over her shoulder, holding onto the round cast iron handle.

  “We haven’t met before.”

  The dark haired woman released the door and turned. Candra meant her words as a prompt for someone to introduce them. Either no one noticed, or they were waiting for more.

  “I’m Candra.”

  To that, the woman smiled. “I know who you are. Every Watcher and fallen knows who you are.”

  “Excuse me?” It wasn’t so much what she’d said as how she’d said it and the way her expression had brightened. A strange prickle of anticipation traveled through Candra’s chest. The sensation of standing on one side of a closed closet door a week before her birthday and knowing beyond it lay secrets. Did she really want to swing that door wide open? What if it wasn’t the doll with the silky hair and plaid dress she’d been wanting for months? What if it was a board game, or one of those little ovens with the light bulb? Wasn’t it occasionally better to exist in happy ignorance than be faced with harsh reality?

  The woman’s eyes met Draven’s for an instant, and heat radiated over Candra’s cheeks. She didn’t like the silent exchange between them. Her pulse elevated, and her lungs seized up, unable to draw a breath. Much to Candra’s extreme horror, she recognized the sick twinge of jealousy uncoiling inside her. She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, hoping for a distraction. She had no right to jealousy regarding Draven.

  The woman held out her hand as an invitation to accompan
y her and smiled. “I think you need to see for yourself.”

  “Is that safe?” Brie jumped in sharply, gripping onto Candra’s shoulders, as if to keep her there by force if she needed to.

  Candra scowled at her. “You have to stop this, Brie. I’m not an eggshell. If I haven’t cracked by now, I’m not going to.”

  “I think, considering what’s going on, given what we know about Candra, she can handle it. Anyway, she has a right to see for herself.”

  Right then, Candra prepared herself to give the woman a chance. They had only met, and she was ready to treat Candra like an equal instead of a recent kindergarten graduate. She shrugged Brie’s hands off and turned to her.

  “You don’t need to worry so much anymore. I’m going to take care of this.”

  Lofi, who was standing just out of Brie’s line of vision, moved her head side to side slowly. Her lips formed an O shape, indicating that might not have been the best thing to tell Brie. A hand slipped into hers and tugged her away.

  “I’m Sandal, by the way.”

  Sandal led her through the narrow hallway that connected the chapel to the main building of Saint Francis’s College. Usually, students and faculty used it only during bad weather, but it currently provided the only safe passage between the conjoined buildings. Going outside was out of the question with hordes of Lilith’s minions all over the city. The furnace seemed to be still operational; despite the freezing weather, inside remained tolerably warm. They passed several people in the hallway headed toward the gym, most carrying things like blankets and bottled water. Candra didn’t know any of them, but they huddled closer to the wall as she passed with Sandal. She found herself looking back as they continued walking, leaving Sandal to hold her arm and guide her blindly along.

  Voices emanated from the cafeteria as they got closer, a low, rushed murmur of sound. Candra noted it as different from the usual mess of chirpy giggles and rumbling discussions. It was muted, like a screen of dread was warping it. The door swung in just as Sandal raised her hand. Father Patrick’s shoulders slumped in obvious relief at the sight of them. While one hand remained on the door, he held a baseball bat in the other. A contrite blush crept over his cheeks, and a nervous smile formed his lips.

  “It’s you.” He lowered the bat, nodding to a man Candra didn’t recognize behind him. The man held a massive kitchen knife ready to strike. “We weren’t expecting you.”

  “Where are your Watchers?” Sandal asked, and Candra’s head spun around so fast, she thought it might come off her shoulders.

  “What are you doing?” she ground out in a low voice.

  “Two are gone to see about gathering anything we can from lockers. The others are over there.” He pointed to the rear of the room where a very young-looking and beautiful woman cradled a small screaming child in her arms. The child squirmed relentlessly, and even from a distance, Candra could make out his pudgy cheeks, blotchy and purple from his wailing.

  Haphazard boarding covered all the windows, and the tables and chairs had been readjusted to nearer the serving station, leaving marginally more space at the back. There, people were lying on the floor in makeshift beds of blankets and pillows. They were all different colors and textures, stolen, Candra guessed, from anywhere they could gather them. There had to be two hundred people of all ages packed in like sardines.

  “Where’s his family?” she enquired, motioning with an incline of her head to the Watcher and the child.

  Father Patrick scrubbed his hand over his face and rubbed the back of his neck. His black cassock had a long tear down the length of the sleeve. “Gone. One of his neighbors heard him screaming. They brought him in before they left the city…or at least tried to leave. We don’t know if anyone’s gotten out.”

  Candra’s jaw slackened. What happened? The school had turned into some sort of shelter overnight. “Is this all? Are there others?”

  As if noticing her for the first time, Father Patrick’s eyes widened a little. “Candra.”

  “Answer me,” she demanded.

  Father Patrick’s history with foreign missions meant he was probably well used to working with limited resources and in less than ideal situations. She also knew he had little time for people with money and a lot of people living nearby had plenty of money.

  “The gym,” he responded, too shocked to chastise her insubordinate tone as he usually would have. “We had to set a schedule for meal times so we didn’t get overcrowded, but we got overcrowded anyway and had to move some in here.”

  “What about the lecture halls? Couldn’t you move some in there?” She moved forward. No one paid much attention to them, although she recognized a few faces as students. No one she knew in more than passing.

  The aroma of vegetable soup came from the kitchen, and her stomach growled. The food served in the cafeteria had never smelled so enticing before. Hunger had given her a fierce appetite.

  “We turned off the heating anywhere we aren’t using to save on fuel. Who knows how long we’ll be here. Some of the men are working on that right now.”

  “What about the hallways?”

  “There too. There was a problem with stuck valves.”

  Candra nodded. She didn’t know how long they would be there either, but if she had anything to do with it, it wouldn’t be long.

  “The earth shall cast out the dead,” he sighed, surveying the room.

  “What?”

  “Candra needs to eat,” Sandal broke in before he answered.

  Father Patrick nodded and directed them toward the serving station before returning his attention to the door. They queued up behind the few others accepting ladles of lumpy soup and huge bread rolls. For someone so concerned about heat, he sure didn’t seem to be conserving food.

  “What did he mean about the dead?” Candra whispered. “And what’s going on with the windows? I thought Lilith can’t come in here.”

  Sandal twisted her long braid into a knot at the back of her neck and leaned in close to Candra, keeping her voice barely audible. “It’s from the Bible. ‘Thy dead shall live, my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.’”

  “But they’re not the dead.”

  Sandal’s eyebrows arched upward, and she shrugged. “It’s easier to allow people to accept what they want to than to try to convince them of the truth. There’s a whole bunch of people who don’t know what to think.”

  “Is that why the windows are boarded?”

  “That was to keep people busy for a while. They think it helps, so it helps them.”

  “Who exactly do they think the Watchers are…and me?”

  “Military, of course.”

  Candra resisted the urge to smile. There was really nothing remotely funny about the situation. The idea that Father Patrick thought they were in the middle of a zombie apocalypse protected by the military, shockingly depleted of weapons, had her thinking that maybe she hadn’t woken up after all.

  “I want to see the gym,” Candra said as she took a recently vacated seat at a nearby table.

  “You need to eat.” Sandal covered her mouth to whisper, although she needn’t have bothered. The woman beside her was preoccupied with staring into empty space. “You are the key to saving them and us.”

  “I know what I am,” Candra replied. She made no effort to keep her voice low. What did it matter if people had no idea what was really going on anyway. “Can I ask you something?”

  Sandal nodded.

  “How does a soul become ruptured?”

  Sandal eyed her quizzically. “Why would you ask that?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Candra brushed it off quickly, hoping Sandal would take it as nothing more than a passing curiosity.

  The clinking of spoons on bowls almost completely drowned out Sandal’s soft sigh. “A mortal sin, a deliberate grievous act, knowingly committed with awareness of the consequences.”

 
; Candra stirred her soup, watching the tiny cubes of vegetables bob in the sauce.

  “Of all the sins, only one can rupture a soul—murder.”

  Candra bit down on the inside of her cheek and thought of Philip. Wasn’t that a mortal sin? Apparently not. She hadn’t been in control of her body then; the Arch’s power had overtaken her. She hadn’t willingly taken his life.

  Sandal’s hand reached out and touched hers lightly. Candra met her eyes hesitatingly.

  “Everything can be forgiven, Candra, even a mortal sin. If you need to talk, you can talk to me.”

  Candra nodded, relieved that Sandal had presumed she was thinking about the gallery. The door opened again. Just as before, Father Patrick was there with his baseball bat. This time, she noted his frown and wondered if he wasn’t a little disappointed that he didn’t get to fight off an attack. Perhaps he was the type of guy who secretly played video games halfway into the night, with delusions of one day being a hero in his own action-man scenario. Either way, her slightly bland soup held more interest.

  She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and looked up to see Draven standing just inside the door, observing her. She hadn’t seen him come in but presumed he was the one to disappoint Father Patrick.

  Draven’s eyes pierced her, dark and depthless. His face betrayed nothing of his feelings, but something in his gaze caused a shiver to run over her skin…something raw and anguished. Notions of throwing herself into his embrace played out in her mind. She didn’t. She stayed at the table, frozen in place, the spoon halfway to her parted lips. His fingers flexed by his side, signifying that he wanted to reach out too, but he took a step back and stormed from the room.

  He knows.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  NOTHING CHANGED OVERNIGHT. Everyone, including Candra, sat around waiting. Every time she tried to suggest they plan, Draven insisted they wait it out. For a reason she couldn’t grasp, Gabe backed him up at every turn, but she guessed it had to do with Sebastian and Ananchel’s noticeable absence.