by Carol Oates
Lilith’s shoulders lifted and lowered when she pulled in a deep breath. “Neither Draven nor Sebastian possess the ability to stop me. The only one who could is gone. I, on the other hand, can destroy them both.”
“Do you think you will endear yourself to me by threatening them?”
“I don’t care one way or the other if I’ve endeared you. I’ve already won, Candra. With the Arch gone, there simply is no way to defeat me. Your only consideration now is how badly you lose. Do you send your angels home, or do you send them to their death in a bloody war?”
Candra’s jaw locked, and her teeth pressed down so hard, she imagined them shattering. Her instinct was to fly across the desk at Lilith. Inside, her heart pounded, and her muscles tensed. There was too much at stake to lose control. She had to remain calm.
“It’s very straightforward. Ivy’s soul got me here, but it isn’t strong enough to sustain me.”
“What do you want?” Candra asked in a flat tone. Her patience with Lilith was wearing paper-thin.
“I want you.”
Candra barked a laugh and shook her head. “That’s your proposition? That’s the best you can come up with?”
Lilith went on unperturbed, her serene features giving away nothing to suggest her internal reaction to Candra’s outburst. “I am offering you a gift. Do not try my patience by flinging it back in my face.”
Candra cleared her own expression of incredulity. The whole situation seemed entirely too familiar. “What is it you would plan to do with me?”
“I plan to possess you.”
Candra narrowed her eyes. “One thing you and I should get straight is no one owns me. I am not property to possess.”
Lilith smiled condescendingly. “Oh, don’t be dull-witted. Haven’t you been paying attention? I need a vessel—a body to possess. I can’t die, but you don’t want to see the mess I become if I don’t feed. I would go through humans like tissue paper. Angels are not accessible to me.” She paused and tilted her head, likely taking in Candra’s startled wide eyes. “You are one of the Nephilim, stronger than any human. You will be my vessel.”
Candra’s mouth opened to respond, but she had no words, and her mind was utterly blank. She couldn’t think of a smart retort or any kind of comeback at all. The idea was incomprehensible. She swallowed thickly, and her stomach heaved to the extent that she darted her eyes around the room for somewhere to vomit.
“Think about it, Candra. Without me, you are only a half-breed—a mutt. You will never be equal to the Watchers you surround yourself with, and you will never be human. You will grow old and die. Even then, you know your torment will never be over. You will never know the true heaven. You will be without almost everyone you love for an eternity. You have an angelic body and a human soul, both of which I require to remain here…and I intend to remain here. Think of all those humans you could save.”
Candra’s stomach convulsed violently. She would have left immediately if she could stand. The problem was she knew it was at least possible that Ivy’s soul was trapped in there somewhere. She had seen with her own eyes; the body was already degenerating, although most wouldn’t notice yet.
“I could make you stronger. Together, we would be greater than you can imagine. With me, you would never have to die.”
“But I would be imprisoned forever, inside you.”
Lilith nodded once, conceding to Candra’s statement. “Well, there is that, but wouldn’t the tiny sacrifice be worth it? Your friends wouldn’t have to die. I can give them their heaven. I want this world. It’s what I was promised. It belongs to me. I wasn’t lying when I said you can send them back. Give yourself to me, and I will give you the key. No one else has to die.”
Candra shook her head, and each breath she took was splintered metal, tearing her apart. “No, it’s a lie. You’re lying.”
“No.”
“But you’re tied by free will. That’s the catch. You can’t take my body unless I agree to it.”
Lilith’s lips pressed together in a straight line, and her pupils dilated, confirming what Candra pointed out. Lilith couldn’t just take her.
“What if I don’t agree? I could just kill myself.”
“Oooh, spirited little solider, aren’t you? You could, but are you prepared to risk what I will do to your angels after you are gone? What about your friend Ivy? Eventually, she will become like the others inside.”
Lilith rocked the chair back twice and laced her fingers across her stomach. Candra forced herself to look away from her eyes when all she saw was Ivy. It hit her that this was part of the plan too. If she saw some part of Ivy in Lilith, it would make it harder for her to say no. Once again, the burden of being a catalyst to impending war weighed on her shoulders.
“Come, come now. Suffice it to say, I am not alone. Did you think I brought you here to reveal all my secrets? What kind of nemesis would that make me?”
“No.” Candra sucked in a shallow breath, not caring anymore that Lilith had the upper hand. There was no denying she was capable of more than Sebastian warned. Lilith threatened war against the Watchers; Candra had to take that threat seriously. Lilith was the danger approaching, the root of the darkness in the city, the thing she was created to stand against. “But I am grateful you reminded me that you aren’t holding me here.”
Candra stood to go with an overwhelming feeling the conversation was a waste of time as far as gaining an advantage went. Everyone would be angry with her, and she’d gained no information she could use to excuse her decision other than the existence of a crusty old knife.
“Thank you for your time.” Candra nodded curtly.
Lilith clucked her tongue and smiled, rocking back in the seat again. “Ah, yes, time. It’s something I have in abundance, and you don’t.”
Candra looked over her shoulder to see Lilith placing the knife back in the drawer. She didn’t have to be reminded of her mortality. She had been born; she aged…would continue to age and die. It was something she’d already thought about. As their situation stood, death would eventually separate her from Sebastian. Lilith offered a separation of another kind. Lilith knew exactly what she offered. Taking Lilith’s deal guaranteed a one-way ticket to heaven for Sebastian and anyone else who wanted it. Lilith had found her weakness.
Candra decided she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything else study-related for the day, and it would be better to go home. She needed to digest what she’d learned from Lilith. She couldn’t share anything with the others, not yet. Lilith’s offer was too simple: send the Watchers home, save humanity from becoming dinner, and all for the price of her life. She had to figure out the catch. There had to be something else.
Chapter Ten
CANDRA WAS SURPRISED to find a sleek red convertible waiting for her outside—surprised and not at all pleased.
Ananchel leaned against the door, her long red hair moving in the breeze like flames licking at her beautiful face. She wore her customary leathers accompanied by thigh-high stiletto boots, which looked as if someone had painted them onto her toned muscles. Ananchel was already statuesque, and the addition of the boots made her positively Amazonian. The outfit was finished off with blood red lips and an open, long black coat flapping around her ankles.
“I would say it’s good to see you…” Candra trailed off and hoisted her book bag farther onto her shoulder.
“But we both know you would be lying, so what would be the point?” Ananchel shrugged, as always totally unaffected by Candra’s dislike of her.
Besides her bizarre ability to bring pleasure without ever touching, she had almost killed Candra accidentally. Candra still wasn’t convinced falling five stories from a parking garage had been an accident. Of course, then there was Ananchel’s previously intimate relationship with Sebastian. The less Candra thought about that, the better it was for everyone’s sanity. Draven, on the other hand, trusted Ananchel with his life and wouldn’t have a word said against her.
“Where’s Lofi?”
“The pooch got called away, and lucky me, I got the short straw.”
“For the last time, stop referring to Lofi as Sebastian’s lapdog.”
Ananchel’s stunning features broke out into a wide grin. “Yes, it’s probably better you stop telling me since I won’t stop. There is no point in wasting your precious breath.” She pushed off the car and opened the door with an exaggerated wave of her hand, indicating for Candra to climb inside. “Your chariot awaits, my lady.”
Candra stood firm. “I can make my own way home.” Just for good measure, she gave what she hoped was an inconspicuous glance around to make sure her guards were watching. Two workers on high scaffolding were cleaning out the guttering of a red-bricked building opposite the school. One subtly glanced her way. Down the street, a police officer lowered his head almost indiscernibly. There were probably others.
Ananchel rolled her eyes and huffed loudly, obviously bored with the conversation already. “In case you haven’t noticed, I answer to Sebastian these days. So please…get in before I have to lift you in.”
Candra snorted a laugh. Ananchel had little time for anyone other than Draven and even less for Sebastian.
“Gee, answering to Sebastian? That must be hard on you,” Candra taunted. She wasn’t afraid of Ananchel. That ship had sailed long ago.
Ananchel’s dark brown eyes gleamed and flickered with reddish-gold when she blinked, her full lips pulling up into a smirk. “Oh, well, Sebastian was always hard—”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” Candra cut her off blackly as images she could have seriously done without flashed through her mind.
Ananchel’s laughter rang out against the backdrop of cars whizzing past and the sound of a jackhammer at nearby road works.
“Get in,” Ananchel instructed, losing all amusement in her voice. “I really don’t have all day.”
Candra walked stonily toward the car, a condemned woman walking the plank. Any conversation that ensued with Ananchel was sure to be unpleasant. Sebastian had better have a good reason for this, she thought to herself. Her day was already bad enough.
Ananchel’s heels clicked loudly on the concrete as she walked around the back. Despite the surrounding noise pollution, she was always ultra-aware of Ananchel. Seconds later, the car skidded away from the curb and left, trailing smoke in its wake.
“Do you know what it takes for an angel to fall?” Ananchel asked casually as she weaved in and out of traffic, paying no heed to indicators or lights.
Candra gripped onto the armrest, wondering what it was about angels that made them oblivious to the speed they traveled in a car. “No one has ever told me.” She didn’t want to admit she had never asked.
“I once told you your father and I were friends. I suppose you haven’t worked out yet how that came to pass?” Ananchel’s eyes darted sideways to Candra.
The car squealed through a red light, making Candra flinch. “Do you have a death wish?”
Ananchel chuckled, a deep throaty sound that would have floored any man. Resentment once again bubbled up inside Candra when she thought about Ananchel with Sebastian. She couldn’t stop herself, although she shouldn’t care. Rationally, their tryst was before Sebastian had met her. Candra supposed it was because Ananchel was gorgeous, and even among Watchers, she stood out as if she were the only light in an endless darkness. She oozed sexuality and an immeasurable power. She feared nothing and no one; her confidence was intimidating, even for someone with the self-confidence Candra possessed.
Candra told herself again that Sebastian had chosen her, but a tiny part of her wondered why, when Ananchel still all but salivated for him.
“You haven’t answered,” Ananchel pushed.
“Neither did you,” Candra countered. She recognized the streets on the way to the brownstone.
“You’re avoiding. You don’t want to like me…I can understand that.” Ananchel sighed noncommittally. “But you use irrelevant excuses to keep the status quo intact.”
Candra crossed her arms in reflex to Ananchel’s words and uncrossed them quickly so as not to appear childishly stubborn. Ananchel wasn’t her friend and never would be. Loss slammed her in the gut for the hundredth time that day when she thought of Ivy.
Ananchel shook her head and continued. “To fall, an angel must want it completely and sacrifice their wings. They must be torn away from the body and the body healed quickly before the angelic protection leaves their blood. If they aren’t absolute in the decision, their wings will heal.”
Candra shut her eyes and recalled the jagged bone on Brie’s back. She shuddered and opened her eyes again, turning to the side window. They had almost reached Sebastian’s home.
There was some form of a commotion on the street up ahead. Two men were fighting, and the closer they got, Candra saw the people gathering around them weren’t trying to stop them or pull them apart. They were cheering. Men and women in tailored business suits and designer clothes clambered for a closer view of the scuffle. Was it a coincidence that trouble began to brew again straight after her meeting with Lilith? Is this what happens if I don’t agree?
She shook her head, ridding herself of the thought. “Why are you telling me this? Why is it important now with all this going on?” Candra waved in the direction of the disturbance.
“I thought you should know how far people are prepared to go for those they love.”
Candra sighed, understanding what Ananchel was getting at, a gentle reminder to Candra about taking risks with her life. Slinking off with Lilith had been a stupid risk, given everything her father and Brie had given up to keep her safe. She’d relied on Lofi’s prediction that Lilith wouldn’t act, but Lofi wasn’t infallible.
“I get it,” Candra muttered begrudgingly.
“Good. You are important. Remember that.”
Chapter Eleven
ANANCHEL HONKED THE HORN and skidded away from the curb before Candra made it past the stone eagles perched on pillars at the top of the steps. Sebastian flung the door wide open and, in one blinding blur of movement, pulled Candra across the threshold and into a breathtakingly passionate embrace. His exuberant kiss had a twofold effect. First, her body reacted as if someone had lit a fuse inside her, and second, it got her hopes up that maybe Sebastian had reconsidered his sex ban.
Her bag dropped to the floor, and she heard the door close over the muffled sound of her rushed breathing against his mouth. Sebastian lifted her from the ground as if she weighed nothing at all and spun her around to sit her on the half-round table in the hallway. The bowl that usually held discarded keys clattered to the floor as Sebastian’s fingers inched up her outer thigh. Candra’s heart drummed, her chest heaved, and her hands smoothed over his biceps. She relished every stroke of his tongue and the sweep of his lips over her jaw. His muscles contracted, and his warm skin felt molten under her caress. Candra’s fingers wound up into his hair, gripping him almost desperately. It could never be too much; touching him like this was excruciating in its sweetness. Hot shivers tightened in her stomach when he moaned into her mouth and cupped her ass, sliding her toward his hard body.
Candra knew this was reaction and not action on Sebastian’s part. Something had pushed him, but her brain was suddenly the consistency of cotton candy and unable to form logical thought. He took over every sense. His taste and smell filled her head. He clung to her and held her throat in his hands, his thumb running a path slowly, sensuously up and down the artery below her ear. Sebastian gauged her every physical response to him and understood exactly where to touch her so her body and mind ached to surrender to him.
“Eh hem.”
Candra moved her hands to his hips, hooking her index fingers through the loops on his jeans, tugging him closer even as he tried to move away.
“I said, eh hem,” Lofi repeated louder from somewhere above them, but Candra didn’t open her eyes to look.
One more “eh hem,” Candra thought to herself, and Lo
fi was going on her list.
Lofi didn’t need to, because Sebastian broke away from Candra’s mouth and leaned his forehead against hers. He was panting, just like her. It gave Candra a remarkable giddy happiness to know she could make him pant.
“Don’t ever sneak off again,” he warned her sternly. “I need to know you are safe.” His voice was raw with need, and a dark undertone screamed of a wild unfamiliar fear that Candra didn’t recognize in him at all.
“I’m sorry,” she answered, and every breath she took sent his taste rocketing through her. A thin sheen of perspiration dampened the place where their heads touched. Her entire body needed dousing in ice cold water if she wanted to get a handle on her hormones. Candra maneuvered enough to plant a lingering soft kiss to his mouth and felt the tremor of his jaw moving when he swallowed. She didn’t want to stop. She wanted Sebastian to kiss her into oblivion, to make her forget everything, the way he had a moment ago, before her memories all came crashing back. Another momentous decision loomed, and this time, she had more to lose than ever.
“Oh, good grief,” Lofi huffed good-naturedly, which seemed a little peculiar given the circumstances.
Candra looked up to see Lofi standing several steps up the ornate staircase. She had changed out of her uniform into a pair of skinny jeans and a formfitting purple sweater. The color should have clashed with her pink hair, but as always, Lofi looked effortlessly beautiful.
Candra shifted her focus back to Sebastian. “I didn’t think—”
“How about you talk about it later,” Lofi broke in. Out of the corner of her eye, Candra noticed Lofi gripping onto the rail so hard, the decorative balustrade seemed to shiver. The metal flowers forming the elaborate design struggled against the vines strangling them.
Sebastian, still intently staring at Candra’s face, didn’t appear to take in Lofi’s interruption of her apology. Something was off.
“I’m sorry you had to see her today, but I don’t want to talk about that now,” Sebastian said.
