Ember (33 page)

Brie and Candra both heard the car pull up outside the house at the same time and exchanged a nervous glance.

“This is it, I suppose.” Candra smiled with a forced brightness.

Brie grabbed hold of her hands and looked into her eyes seriously. “It’s not too late, Candra. You can still back out. You have a soul. You have such a pure and beautiful soul, and maybe others will too. We could take the chance; it’s not bad odds. And what about Sebastian?”

Candra shook her head and looked down to their tightened hands, swallowing thickly when she felt a lump building in her throat. “I can’t gamble with people’s lives, not even for Sebastian. Believe me, I’ve considered it. Maybe it would be okay, Maybe everyone would just continue on as they are now, but what if it wasn’t? Who would be the one to kill them if more Nephilim were born and they were bad? What about the human cost? How would I live with myself if one life was lost that I could have saved? No, this is the only way to convince the Watchers that the covenant was never broken.”

Brie pulled Candra to her and hugged her tightly. “I love you, Candra. As long are we keep each other in our hearts we will always be together.”

Even though it would, more than likely, turn out to be a lost cause, Sebastian knew it was his last chance. He wasn’t above begging at this point, or at least that’s what he tried to convince himself as he checked out the two guys flanking him and leading him to Draven’s library. Of all the wrong decisions he had made up to now, he knew this wasn’t one of them. He considered this his first rational action throughout the entire mess. Sebastian’s intention was to try talking Draven round, man to man, so to speak.

From the very beginning they had been at odds, how could they not have been? Draven had been the one who led them all here, chasing a dream of humanity. Strangely, it was only Sebastian’s feelings for Candra and the desperate, sick, gut-wrenching feeling inside him at the idea of losing her that gave him his first genuine insight to how it must have felt for the others to want to truly live and for that desire to push them to do unspeakable things, to make them choose hell over heaven.

The taller of his escorts tapped firmly on the door and waited for Draven to call them in. Upon hearing Draven’s voice, the guard opened the door and held it, gesturing for Sebastian to enter. As he passed the guard, he bowed his head, barely tilting it. If nothing else, just to impart that he wasn’t here as their enemy.

The room was dim, only lit by a few scattered lamps and the streetlight coming though the colored glass where Draven stood with his back to the door and his head lowered. “Sebastian, I would say this is an unexpected surprise, but both of us would know I’m lying.”

Sebastian walked further into the room. “That should make this easier. You know why I’m here.”

Draven chuckled darkly and turned with a smug grin pulling his lips up further in one side than the other. His hair had been combed into submission. Like Sebastian he was dressed in black tie for the evening’s entertainment, except that he wasn’t wearing a jacket. Draven walked over to the liquor cabinet, poured two crystal tumblers of brandy, and turned, offering one to Sebastian.

He approached Draven cautiously, the muscles of his arms and legs twitched, ready to react to any move he made, but Draven seemed perfectly relaxed. Sebastian took the glass from him, and Draven nodded once, lifting his in the air before downing it in one and turning to pour another.

“This is about more than you and me, Sebastian. I’m not in a position to release Candra from the agreement we made. I need her to stand up there with me tonight.”

“She doesn’t want to be with you,” Sebastian argued coldly and swigged from the glass, feeling the warmth of the liquor spread through him.

Draven turned and looked at him with a circumspect expression, inclining his head to the side. “Even if this were about what any of us wants, I would still give you the same answer.”

“What does that even mean?” Sebastian asked. His fingers trembled by his side, wanting to lash out. He clenched his hand into a fist, digging his nails into his palms.

Draven drained his glass, slammed it upside down onto the cabinet and picked up his jacket from a nearby chair. “This is about protecting all of us, Sebastian. Since when is that not an issue for you anymore? Now is not the time for us to be bickering among ourselves over history that none of us can change.”

“History?”

“Yes, history, Sebastian, history!” Draven exclaimed in obvious frustration and scrubbed at his face with the palm of his hand. “Look around you. The city is falling apart. Violence, drugs, robberies, murder. Something is coming. Can’t you feel it? Payne did. Candra feels it, or haven’t you been listening to her?” He huffed out an impassioned breath and pulled his jacket on, shrugging his shoulder and reaching into the sleeves to adjust his shirt.

Sebastian glared at Draven, waiting for him to come out and tell him whatever it was he had been hiding from all of them, something that clearly had him on edge tonight, but Draven said nothing. Sebastian reasoned he must be referring to Candra’s dreams, the ones she told him were strange and frightening. It suddenly dawned on Sebastian that maybe they were more than dreams. Draven was still looking down, pulling at his cuffs, and Sebastian stepped forward, grabbing him roughly by his arm.

“What do you know?” Sebastian demanded. The artery in his neck pumped blood so viciously through his neck that he thought it might burst. Draven jerked his arm, but Sebastian held him steady, glowering at him. He would take Draven on again, here and now if needs be. He would tear him apart to get the answers if he had to.

“Sebastian, think very carefully before you make your next move,” Draven warned blackly with a cold light glinting in his eyes.

“Tell me, Draven.” Sebastian’s voice lowered menacingly. “Or I swear in the Arch’s name I will destroy you where you stand.”

Draven’s arm suddenly twisted out of his grasp, and in a blinding flash and crash of shattering glass from one of the nearby lamps, Draven spun behind Sebastian, still holding his arm, and forced it upward against his back. Sebastian retaliated without thinking and slammed his head back, hitting Draven in the face. As soon as his grip slackened, Sebastian doubled over, his chest to his knees, and launched Draven over his back, sending him smashing into one of the desks. The antique split and crumbled under the stressful force. Sebastian was on him in a split second, ready for his next move.

Instead of fighting back, Draven laughed in his face with a huge open-mouthed smile, mocking him. Rage stabbed at Sebastian’s brain like a million tiny daggers. His fingers tightened and moved to Draven’s throat, and he glared into his rival’s eyes which burned with a fiery gold inside blue. He knew they were both on the verge of losing control completely, but it didn’t matter. He needed to know the truth.

Sebastian grabbed Draven’s arm again roughly, this time dragging him to his feet. Draven wiped the small drip of blood sliding from his nostril with the back of his hand.

“There is no Arch anymore, Sebastian.”

Sebastian’s fingers clenched again, and he jerked Draven’s arm, sneering at him. “You’re insane.”

The muscles in his arm tightened under Sebastian’s grip. “If I’m insane, then so was Payne. It was him who came to me. It was him who begged me to protect Candra from you.”

Sebastian’s fingers released of their own accord, and Draven backed up a step, bending his head toward one shoulder and then the other, stretching his neck.

“You’re lying,” Sebastian challenged him indignantly.
Why would Payne turn to Draven before his own kind?
The answer was staring him in the face: the awful truth that Payne knew he couldn’t trust Sebastian to protect Candra, and so he fell and kept her hidden from him. All the time when Sebastian was trying his damnedest to keep her away from the Tenebras, it was really him that was the greatest danger to her. He had already admitted to himself he would have killed her without remorse if he had known she was born, but it was different now. He was different—he was better because of Candra.

“I wish I were lying, Sebastian, but it’s the truth. If it is any consolation, I didn’t really believe she was Payne’s daughter until I returned to Acheron after you did. I thought maybe Payne was delusional. I thought maybe she was a human child he had taken as his own. I admit the idea of getting one over on you was enough incentive to help him, but then I noticed things. There is a darkness spreading across this world like a sickness, infecting humans and making them act on their darkest thoughts. It was just as Payne told me would happen. When I met Candra for the first time, I knew he was telling the truth.”

Sebastian turned away, clawing his fingers through his hair. This wasn’t why he came here. He hadn’t expected Draven to give Candra up, but he also hadn’t expected Draven to tell him anything like this. It reminded him of Candra’s words, that maybe she was meant for Draven, that she was his before she was born, but Sebastian refused to believe it.

“What truth, Draven? What did Payne tell you?” he pushed through gritted teeth.

“Payne came to me and said he had dreams, messages…he said after we left, a power struggle had broken out in heaven, and the Arch had been overthrown. He said the Arch was sending a gift to us…a weapon. I thought he was mad at first, naturally. Ananchel stayed close by for a time, just in case he wasn’t. I knew when Candra was born, but that was it. She disappeared, and then he came to me again and said he had a daughter and she wasn’t like any other Nephilim and that she would remain hidden until she was an adult. He said we must all prepare ourselves to fight for humanity, and we would be rewarded. I’m talking about us going home, Sebastian. All of us.”

“That is insane. If any of it were true, why would you only be telling us now?”

“Would you have listened to me?” he asked frankly. “If it wasn’t because of your feelings for Candra, would you listen now?”

Sebastian walked toward one of the couches and sank heavily onto the creaking leather with his head in his hands, because as much as he wanted to simply write off what Draven was saying, he couldn’t. He had seen it too, since his return to Acheron. The city was falling apart, and its residents were losing their way and turning on each other. Whatever was going on in the wider world was centered here. Then there was Candra and her existence becoming known to all of them. The interest in her had drawn so many of them to Acheron, back to where it had all begun. He wondered if Draven was right and there was more to it. Were they being gathered for another reason?

“So what are you saying, Draven? Candra is some sort of a weapon?”

“That’s precisely what I’m saying. Before you ask, I don’t know what kind. I just know that something worse than anything we’ve been through is coming, and we will have to stand together, or everything will be lost. I need Candra with me because, right now, none of us can afford to be distracted. I have to keep the covenant intact,” Draven stated unapologetically from behind him.

Sebastian chuckled drably. “Please, Draven, if you are going to be honest, be honest. You and I both know there are other ways. You want Candra with you because you want her. You’ve always been the same: you want, and you take.”

Draven didn’t reply, but his silence was enough to tell Sebastian he was right. He knew in that instant that there was no compromise they could reach here. No amount of pleading would release Candra while Draven was intent on having her, and Candra wouldn’t back away. Sebastian guessed his nemesis was under no illusion he would keep this new information to himself for long, he but knew Draven was working on the certainty that it would change nothing. Candra would still agree to pledge herself to him and do exactly what he wanted, to keep everyone from fighting among themselves until they could figure out what was coming after all of them.

“What do you want me to do, Draven? You know I can’t just walk away, but how do you expect me to stand by and watch her with you?”

“I don’t expect you to do anything other than what you’ve done all along—protect our kind. This world belongs to all of us now as much as it does to the humans. You will have to trust me.”

“Trust you!” Sebastian looked up in astonishment and twisted in his seat to see Draven standing calmly in the muted jewel light from the stained glass behind him. “How can I ever trust you?”

Draven’s head lowered, and Sebastian heard his long drawn out sigh. “That’s just what I thought you would say, unfortunately. It has taken this for us even to be in the same room. I know you better than you think. I believe one day you will appreciate my candor when I say that everything I have done was for all of us first and myself second.”