Iridescent (Ember 2)

by Carol Oates

  “Did he know?”

  “No,” Draven replied. “He wouldn’t have gone after the blade if he did. He would have known I couldn’t keep my promise to protect you.” He paused a moment. “Candra, remember that the blade in Lilith’s possession is an imitation, but it is still a weapon, and she can still hurt you with it.”

  “I’m not afraid,” she began. “We build stuff up, and all we achieve is giving ourselves further to fall. I’m not afraid because I’m sure that whatever happens, there is nothing for me to fear. I guess disappearing seems a peaceful place to be right now, and if I’m not afraid, she can’t use that against me, right?”

  Draven pulled her in close to his side. He let go of her hand and draped his arm around her. “I knew you were special from the moment I laid eyes on you, but even I could never have predicted what you are capable of. You are incredibly brave.”

  “No, I’m not.” Candra leaned her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. “I used to think I was. When I was younger, I couldn’t wait to grow up and save the world, one person at a time. I couldn’t wait to get away from here.” She exhaled noisily. “When it’s over, will you go back?”

  Draven’s finger glided the length of her jawline with a featherlight caress and tilted her face to him. His navy eyes narrowed with intensity, and Candra caught a shimmer of gold. He didn’t speak. His hand reached for hers between them and lifted it gently, turning her palm upward. He watched the movement carefully and with the same utter fascination he’d shown the first time they met. The hairs along Candra’s forearm rose, and the nerves below her flesh came alive, reveling in the chaste gesture. Draven’s thumb traced a circle on her skin, and shivers rushed through her body as he ran the tip of his nose back and forth across her wrist. He inhaled deeply.

  Candra thought about how little she understood Draven and his strange little rituals, or why this one affected her as it did. She was grateful for his company and grateful to have snatched any time with him at all. Her life had been richer with his presence as her friend, something she never dreamed possible in the beginning of their relationship, despite his assurances to the contrary.

  “I will stay as long as you need me,” he said wistfully, curling both his arms around her.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  CANDRA TWISTED AROUND AND AROUND, calling out for someone to answer, but no one did. Her borrowed knee-high leather boots were a size too small and pinched her toes with every step. Sound echoed off the mirror-covered buildings, deceptively hollow and ghostly. The last remnants of daylight reflected off the still puddles of rainwater on the ground, and abandoned cars took up space everywhere she looked. There was nothing but silence. The city seemed to have swallowed up every living creature.

  “Hello,” Candra called at the top of her voice, her trembling fingers cupped around her mouth.

  Dizziness swept over her…as if the very buildings were spinning. The wind whipped up, a swirling cyclone of soggy debris. The ground shuddered. She looked up to the sound of crunching glass in time to see the windows above vibrate, more like disturbed water than something solid and impenetrable. A noise, as loud as thunder, exploded all around her. Candra fell to her knees under a shower of relentless, shattering glass.

  All around her, Lilith’s minions, like maggots from rotting meat, poured out of alleyways, doorways, and sewer covers, tossed aside as if a geyser had exploded below them. At the same time, a great shadow enveloped the area.

  Watchers swooped in from above like a flock of birds shaken loose from their branches. Except they didn’t fly away. Instead, they zoomed toward the ground, their bodies caught in a downward spiral to confuse their foe. Males, all bare-chested and dazzling with fierce beauty. Females with their upper torsos crossed with fabric to cover only their breasts while leaving their wings unencumbered by human clothing.

  Candra envisioned autumn days when she’d stood below maple trees in the park, with the sun peeking through the foliage, and let their helicopter seeds fall all around her. She closed her eyes and rose to her feet, filled with a certainty that none of Lilith’s creatures would get anywhere near her. A circle sixty feet in diameter formed around her.

  Watchers fought Lilith’s minions, some hand-to-hand and some with blades. The Watchers wielded gleaming broadswords that reflected a blue-white light and long, curved daggers with black handles. Candra could make out symbols engraved into the shining metal on one side but had no idea what they meant. Names. It came to her from a half-forgotten midnight conversation with Sebastian. Each blade is marked with the name of the angel wielding it. Shrieks and battle cries filled the air like a new wind blowing through the city, washing it clean. Meanwhile, humans and fallen remained hidden, Brie and Sandal among them, possibly Ananchel too. No matter what happened, afterward, nothing would be the same for any of them.

  Candra concentrated hard, searching inside for threads of the Arch’s light. It was there, deep inside, a stagnant pool of warmth and strength. Her stomach tumbled, and her heart raced. Puffs of warm air formed condensation as it left her lips, and her fingers flexed by her side. She turned in a circle, watching the brutal fighting all around her. Some of the Watchers had hidden their wings, allowing their foe closer but also giving them more room to maneuver. Others used them as a shield, flapping them out wide and retracting them to keep the minions from getting a clear shot at their backs. The filthy demons outnumbered them at least twenty to one and spread out as far as the eye could see. They continued to swarm forward, attempting to strike the Watchers down and keep other Watchers from healing them. Lofi, Nathaniel, Gabe, and Draven were all out there.

  The sickening, vile stench of evil permeated the air. A flash of lightening preceded the booming roar of thunder. Candra looked up to see the clouds darkened overhead—nature protesting against what the world had come to.

  A shiver rushed over her skin and tingled down her spine. Heated blood crept up her neck and flooded her cheeks. It wasn’t like before when the Arch pushed through. It was down to her now. She would have to pull the power forth, and the mental exertion made her knees shake violently. She imagined herself sinking into the pool of strength and allowing it to wash over her. Slowly, she felt the energy grow and pulse below her flesh. She remembered her promise to Brie before she’d left; she’d told her all of this would be nothing more than a bad dream soon.

  She whipped around to see one of the minions break through. A child, small enough to slip past the fray unnoticed. Candra guessed he was about six or maybe seven. Nothing about him appeared human. His sunken eyes looked like pools of tar shadowed by purple smudges over his cheeks. His lips pulled back in an evil grimace over broken yellow teeth. His scruffy jeans were wet from the knees down, and his hands dripped dark liquid. He’d crawled past the fighting.

  She stepped back, her muscles tightening and adrenaline suddenly pumping fast as the little boy lunged for her. Twenty feet away. He moved in a blinding flash, his face enraged, twisted with mania, demonic in appearance.

  Candra hadn’t accounted for this. In hindsight, someone should have. Ten feet. She crouched, pressing her lips together to hold back any cries for help. She could subdue one boy for the sake of allowing the others to keep up their fight. She planted her feet, every inch of exposed skin on her arms now glistened with sweat and blazed with radiance. The fighting carried on from what she could hear. She never took her eyes off the boy. He reared back, readying to pounce mid-stride, and launched himself at her. An ugly gurgling sound came from his lips, and spit dribbled down his slimy chin. The boy’s mouth literally watered for a taste of death.

  Two feet, and the boy was in the air, fingers clawed like some rabid animal. Candra’s breaths came out loud and rasping; her lungs didn’t seem to want to hold onto the air. She held her ground as time extended before her, as if the entire world spun slower for an instant.

  This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. It wasn’t part of her plan. She was the bait, calling out and challenging Lilith t
o come get her. All she had to do was stand there and wait for Lilith to come. She’d insisted this would work, had the others put themselves on the line. They trusted her to do what they couldn’t. Too soon.

  Her fingers curved, ready to reach for the gnarled handle of the blade tucked into a sheath in her boot. The boy’s mouth opened wide, wider than it seemed possible, a snake unhinging its jaw, ready to swallow its prey whole—ready to rip her apart. It was all too late.

  A large, graceful hand swiped at his neck. The world stopped turning, and silence descended like an avalanche. The force of the impact to his body ripped the boy from in front of her. He spun like a discus to the edge of the crowd and smashed to the street with a sickening wet slosh and crunch. His face practically rippled on impact, yet his black eyes remained wide open and disbelieving. For a moment, his body twitched, clinging to the last shards of life, and then stilled. He didn’t get up.

  Candra looked up into startled navy eyes and realized the boy was dead. Draven towered over her, his black wings extended wide. Every inch of his body trembled with fury, and his shoulders locked solid with tension. Perspiration and blood coated his bare torso, and along with the earlier injury to his hand, five long gashes began at his right collarbone and extended all the way to his left side.

  “I’m sorry,” he panted gruffly. His black hair plastered to his head and neck. “I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s Lilith’s.” Candra wasn’t about to let him berate himself. They would save as many as possible, but they had come into this knowing some would die. There was simply no way around it.

  “She didn’t show. I’m taking you out of here. There will be another time.”

  “No,” Candra protested when he moved to place his arms around her. The power of the Arch still surged through her, although the Arch remained silent. “Not yet. I can’t allow this to go on any longer.”

  His eyes searched in the distance over her head, and his tongue darted out quickly across his top lip, leaving a glossy, moist trail.

  “You might have been killed, and it would have been over anyway.”

  “But I wasn’t.”

  Draven opened his mouth to say something else. Just as quickly, Candra thought over a myriad of retorts to fire back, all the reasons she couldn’t back down now.

  He didn’t speak. His body jerked forward a little, and pain stung Candra’s arms where his fingers bit deeply into her flesh and radiated all the way down to her fingertips. Despite her skin being slick with sweat, she felt the bristle of hair rising across the back of her neck.

  Draven frowned with confusion in his narrowed eyes and his parted lips soundlessly moving. His body jerked again. This time, he grunted but still with nothing intelligible, nothing to latch onto as a reason for the way his expression contorted or the blood drained from his cheeks.

  “No,” a voice she recognized roared, a low guttural sound that vibrated through her entire body.

  Candra looked in the direction of the voice and saw Lofi struggling her way to the front of the crowd. Her wings were tucked in behind her back, and she held a bloodied sword aloft over her head. Her rounded eyes fixed on Draven…behind Draven.

  Draven’s grip loosened, and as if on reflex, Candra’s hands lifted to support him, clutching uselessly at the bare skin above the band of his dark jeans. His wings juddered and slumped limply. They didn’t fold in; it was more like they simply drooped. It happened so quickly. One minute, he was standing there arguing with her, the next, his eyes rolled in his head and his body slipped sideways and crumpled to the ground.

  Candra’s heart halted, and she fought to cling onto her equilibrium.

  “Severed spinal cord. Does the trick every time. Really, though, I don’t know how you could ever stand that wise old owl.” Lilith raised one bloodied hand and licked the red liquid from her Creation Blade as a child might lick cake batter from a spoon. She pouted, pursing her lips. Two lines appeared between her brows when she frowned. “Such a waste. He was very pleasing to the eye.” She looked away and tapped a finger lightly on her chin, appearing thoughtful and leaving behind a scarlet smudge. “Where to start, where to start…” She scrutinized Candra sideways then, her full lips curving into a smile.

  Her movements were disconcerting, to say the least. It was almost as if she floated on a cushion of air, and her eyes had taken on a milky appearance. The green had almost completely faded to nothing more than a hint of its previous radiance. Her skin was paler, too. It had lost the deep golden color and become drier, desiccated, as if it was fragile and would break apart at the merest touch. It reminded Candra of a packed sand castle on a beach, solid from a distance, but one brush of a finger or gust of wind would bring the entire thing tumbling down.

  An illusion, she thought to herself. Lilith was anything but fragile. Candra inhaled tentatively, trying her best not to glance at Draven’s prone body. Was he dead? He’d said the razor sharp imitation could prove just as lethal as the real deal. A severed spine would send a human into shock and almost immediate death. She had no idea if the same injury was fatal to an angel as quickly, or if he was only temporarily out of action. She couldn’t look at Lofi either. She wouldn’t allow anything to break her concentration now. The image of Sebastian lying dead in her arms was already etched into her brain, and there wasn’t much she could do about that. She’d scrubbed at it roughly, but the image was chalk on a blackboard. No matter how hard she’d tried to erase it, some remnants remained.

  At once, rage began to bubble in the pit of her stomach, but against every instinct she possessed, she had to swallow it back down. Regardless of whatever game Lilith was playing, Sebastian was dead and Draven out of action, so she had to keep a level head.

  “You said you only wanted life. What is all this about?” Candra asked as politely as her anger would allow.

  Lilith’s eyes were ancient, knowing, and ever-so-slightly distant, as if she wasn’t really in there. They continually darted between Candra’s until she was practically dizzy from Lilith’s stare. She regarded Candra with inquisitiveness as she wiped her stained hand on the side of her white dress.

  “You dawdled too long.” Her tongue rolled over the words lazily, almost to the point of humming, and laced each one with irrefutable danger. “And I grew lonely. Don’t you like my children? Sebastian liked them very much.”

  “What is it you want now?” Candra pushed with a little less patience, forcing her desire to pound Lilith into pavement into submission.

  Lilith laughed; the tinkling chuckles were almost maniacal against the backdrop of violence going on around them. “I want the same thing I’ve always wanted. I want my freedom. I want to live. So, be a sweetheart and move this along. I’ll go easy on your friends and put them out of their misery quickly.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  Lilith’s expression transformed in a flash, and her mouth twisted with fury. The last of the color drained from her eyes, as if the darkness in her sucked away at the human souls inside. Candra held on to her last shred of hope that Ivy was still in there somewhere as Lilith began to move again. She circled Candra slowly, walking toe to heel in her towering red pumps. Candra turned with her, keeping pace. She wasn’t about to turn her back on Lilith.

  “If you don’t—” one side of Lilith’s lips twitched, and her white eyes gleamed bright as new snow in the fading light “—I will be forced to begin snacking.”

  Chapter Forty

  CANDRA GROUND HER TEETH so hard, her jaw cracked audibly with strain, and each breath came through her nose accompanied by a whooping sound, like a bull ready to charge. She swallowed hard, clenching her fists by her side to control the tremors in her fingers and contain the powder keg of energy inside her. It’s not time yet, she reminded herself.

  “It’s never going to happen. You knew that from the beginning,” Candra told her defiantly.

  Lilith tilted her head and sighed. She crossed her arms, tapping one finger on the crook
of her arm. Her nails were filthy with a dark blue tinge around the bottom of the nail beds. Candra realized what Lilith reminded her of: a corpse—a walking, breathing corpse.

  “I thought you might say that. So pointless. I will get what I want sooner or later, because I hold all the cards.” She raised one eyebrow. “I’m sure you know by now that the Creation Blade is the only thing besides the Arch capable of stopping me. I possess one, and the other is long gone.”

  Candra inhaled deeply, forcing her lips to part. The rancid stink in the air was too much for her to continue to breathe through her nose. The compromise was a taste of rotting eggs, making her stomach churn instead. That, combined with adrenaline and fluttering butterflies, weren’t conducive to her calm. Just another minute. Hold on.

  Lilith regarded her with a thinly veiled annoyance. Candra noticed the network of blue veins beneath her wafer-thin flesh. It would have been easy to allow her eerie beauty to become a distraction. It would have been easy to think about anything other than what she was about to do.

  “Still not convinced? All this isn’t enough?” Lilith asked, her tone sickly sweet. She waved her hand around, directing Candra’s attention back toward the fighting. The circle of empty street around them had shrunk as the brawl grew nearer. “Look up a little.”

  Candra did as asked and scanned over the heads around her while keeping Lilith in her peripheral view. She maintained her balance enough to act as soon as she needed to.

  “Up a little more and to your left.”

  She glanced at Lilith with pursed lips. What was her game? Candra lifted her eyes a little, conscious that another inch or so, and she’d lose sight of her enemy.

  The air in her lungs turned to ice and pushed through her like shards of glass. Every inch of her skin broke out in a cold sweat, and her nails dug into her palm. Father Patrick stood between two large males at the remains of a shattered full-length window in the nearest sky-scraping tower. Thick smoke plumed upward from a fire on one of the lower floors. He was too far away to read his expression accurately, but his chest rose and fell with exaggerated force. Otherwise, he didn’t budge. She imagined his eyes were opened wide in terror at the sight playing out below him. No doubt, since he couldn’t see angel wings, it reinforced his theory about zombies.