Iridescent (Ember 2) (39 page)

“You’re a fool,” she seethed. “You could have had it all.”

He caught her by the waist and spun her around, trapping her wings against his chest. Draven circled one arm around her body and held the other under her chin as she struggled mercilessly against him. They may have been twins, but her strength was no match for his; it never had been, even when they sparred. Now he understood why: Ananchel had lost her faith in herself long ago. Grasping at power from other sources made her weak. She lacked the ability to center herself. All this time, he’d thought her so special because she’d carried her power into this world. He hadn’t seen it for what it was: a symptom of the sickness taking her over, a torment she couldn’t escape. She craved power, and she craved suffering. That had sustained her.

Draven opened his hand wide over her throat, and power seized his body until his heart galloped and his lungs might as well have been encased in an iron cage. Ananchel grunted with each straining movement, attempting to wrench herself free of his grip. Draven became vaguely aware of the heated shivers caressing his skin. She had resorted to using her gifts on him in her desperation, something she had never tried before. It made his heart ache, and a dry, guttural sound escaped his lips, shaking the room. He wanted to fall to his knees and cry. His instinct told him to beg for mercy for both Ananchel and himself. His knees twitched and caused a painful spasm in his calf muscles. The rage didn’t protect him from the loss of his twin. He knew there was no one there to hear his pleas, not now. The only thing left to Draven was to hand down her punishment and hope it wasn’t too late to turn things around for the rest of them.

“It will be over quickly,” he whispered into her ear, tasting his own salty tears on his tongue.

“No,” she howled, digging her nails into his forearm across her chest. Dark rivets of blood flowed from the wounds. Ananchel used all her strength against him to force him back with her wings, no doubt searching for even the smallest space to use as advantage.

“Shush,” he hushed her. She lacked his undiluted power; her gift lay in other areas. “You still don’t understand, do you? It’s so obvious. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”

Her struggles eased, and Draven chuckled blackly. It was just like Ananchel, that even when believing herself to be so close to her death, her curiosity nevertheless demanded she learn what he meant.

“Candra is not like the other Neph. I could never figure out why she’s a magnet for our kind. What called to so many around the globe.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Ananchel said, trying to shrug him off.

Draven recalled his first meeting with Candra, how he had felt unconsciously connected to her in a way impossible to put his finger on. Something in her called to him and him to her. At the time, he imagined it like those people who divine water using nothing more than a tree branch. There was something inside her that he couldn’t see or touch, but it drove him to her. He recognized her.

“The Arch isn’t gone, Ananchel. He’s just been hiding and waiting for Lilith to make her move. Waiting for us to figure it out.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She is a vessel, Ananchel. Beneath a human soul in a Nephilim body, the light resides inside her.”

Ananchel froze, and for a moment, they stood, still as statues. Entwined like a beautiful creation of a talented artist, the fallen angel in the arms of the avenger.

With Ananchel subdued, Draven acted quickly. His hands retracted and slipped under her arms, curling under her wings and gripping tightly at the place where they connected to her back. As if a switch flicked inside her, she suddenly came back to life.

“No,” she shrieked, desperately wrangling to get away. She had realized her fate.

Draven closed his eyes, pressed his teeth into the flesh of his bottom lip, and then he wrenched the joint.

The sound of ripping flesh and the crunch of shattered bones blended with seemingly endless screams. For a moment, Draven couldn’t decipher where his screams ended and Ananchel’s began. It felt as though his throat might tear apart, and an agonized burning sensation lanced though his own wings. He saw a bright rainbow kaleidoscope of colors behind his eyelids and wondered for a split second if it was delirium. As soon as Ananchel’s body got over the initial shock, she kicked into action again.

Once Draven’s grip slackened, Ananchel crumpled to the ground and began shuffling away from him. He stood with her two wings, which immediately started to harden. Draven watched with utter fascination as each feather turned crisp. It spread over the amputated wings the way heat sizzled away the edges of paper. Piece by piece, they evaporated to nothing before his eyes.

“How could you?” Ananchel demanded. Angry tears streaked down her reddened cheeks. Pieces of black and red feathers stuck to the gaping open wounds that covered the upper part of her back. Pieces of cracked bone poked out of her shredded skin, catching her tangled hair as she whipped her head to him. Blood pooled on the floor around the pathetic sight.

“You left me no choice, Ananchel,” he told her. It was difficult to restrain the break in his voice. Numbness crept over him, starting at the top of his head and trickling downward like ice water. It took a second for him to notice her reaching for something and another moment for him to react.

Ananchel fumbled in the pocket of her leather trousers and pulled out the small black stone. It wasn’t difficult for Draven to wrestle it from her; her strength depleted with each second that passed. He had never removed the wings of an angel, at least not in his active memory, but Draven knew the mechanics. He hadn’t expected the dimness within himself that accompanied it. He could only put it down to the connection between himself and Ananchel fading.

“It was this or kill you.” He forced out the words as he tossed the curleax out of her reach. “I have to finish this, and I can’t have you interfering.”

Ananchel slumped to the ground. “Then kill me. I can’t exist like this.” She reached over her shoulder in disgust. “A half thing, without you.” Her mouth curled downward.

“I won’t kill you, Ananchel, as much as you deserve it.” Draven held his own stone over her injured back. Ananchel attempted to swat it out of his hand, but he moved faster and reconsidered healing her bloody wounds. “I won’t heal you, either, but I’m sure you will find someone who will. Your wings will grow back eventually, only because you didn’t willingly give them up, but I have severed the connection between us forever.”

“Let me bleed out then,” she pleaded. “Let me die.”

Draven paused. The emptiness inside him swelled. He looked down at Ananchel’s prone form, contorted by rage and fear. Despite his earlier fury, the only emotion he felt toward her now was pity. Death would be a release, and he wouldn’t give her that. There had been enough killing, and Draven would avoid more if he could. He closed his eyes and felt his desire to heal her tingle through his veins.

“I will kill myself,” Ananchel said blackly. “I will not allow anyone but you to heal me.”

“That will be your choice, Ananchel. I won’t make the decision for you.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

C
ANDRA’S
E
YES
W
ERE
G
UMMED
S
HUT
, the way eyes can sometimes get after sleeping for too long. Groggily, she forced them open and closed them again straight away. Through her eyelids, she recognized the golden brightness of a summer day and noticed how it heated her face. She lay there a moment, allowing her senses to adjust to her surroundings. The sweet fragrance of newly mown grass and summer flowers engulfed her. Insects she couldn’t identify buzzed overhead. Candra flattened her hand to the ground at her side, ran her fingers over the lush ground covering, and breathed in great big gulps of crystal clean air.

Her vision remained as clouded as her mind when she finally blinked her eyes open again.
How did I get here?
The last thing she recalled was the smell of fresh ground coffee and a bitter tang on her tongue…something coppery.

I recognize this place
, she thought to herself. The slant of the grassy knoll nearby was familiar. She leapt to her feet and spun quickly in the direction of the squeaking swing, but it was empty, moving back and forth limply. A ghostly child’s giggle floated in the air. Candra whirled again.

“Hello?”

Somehow, she had gotten back to a park in Acheron, the place she associated with her waking dreams and sleeping nightmares. Where Sebastian had revealed angels could indeed fly, where she had witnessed Ivy battle against freezing lake water, and where she had spent the last moments of her father’s life.
Last moments
…

Could this be a dream? She asked herself the question over and over, curling her bare toes into the slippery grass, measuring the cool breeze against her skin. The sharp light caused stars to dance across her vision when she averted her gaze from the azure sky. Her jeans were clean, and she couldn’t remember why they shouldn’t be. For some reason, the thought made her heart beat faster and her breath shallow. No, her jeans shouldn’t be clean. Her sweater should be covered in blood. She had no idea how she knew that.

Candra took a couple of tentative steps, fully expecting the ground to warp sideways below her feet or melt away like ice cream, swallowing her up to her ankles. The grass and the earth remained frustratingly solid, reinforcing reality. She walked faster, ignoring the playground and the thick gathering of oak trees behind it. Candra made her way over the knoll, noticing the small rock sticking of out the ground, one side smooth and sharp enough to carve a layer of skin. Her flesh prickled with phantom pain beneath her jeans where Sebastian had healed her.

The sting radiated up her spine, like fingers creeping over her flesh and pinching her brutally. The child’s laughter rang out behind her, tempting her to turn back. She disregarded the tinkling sound and continued onward, surprised when she came to another wall of trees.
These shouldn’t be here.

Candra picked up speed and dashed forward along the edge of the woods, sure all was not what it seemed. She should have reached the gate. The light broke through the branches, shining in her eyes like a disco ball, blinding her. She concentrated on the earth below her feet, cool and damp where the sun didn’t touch. The breeze whipped past her face, and her hair streaked out behind her back. Her memory returned with a vicious clarity. She had died at the hands of a monster.

Without noticing, Candra ran out into an open space. Rough stones cut into the soles of her feet, and water splashed, soaking her jeans as far up as her knees. She froze, panting and exhausted, taking in the scenery around her. A lakeshore, its flat, mirror-like surface reflecting everything around it, so she couldn’t tell where the shore ended and the water began. A steep rock face on the opposite side stretched toward the sky, and silence cocooned both the lake and Candra in a plastic bubble.

Her heart thundered, and hot blood rushed under her skin. Perspiration rolled down the back of her neck and plastered tendrils of hair to her face.

I can’t be dead.
The words held no real promise. This wasn’t a dream like the others; it was far too real, and she remembered dying. Or at least, she remembered falling…and the light.

She bent over, pressing her palms into her thighs, thinking how this place was so much more a nightmare than heaven. How could she have ended up here, in this desolate, lonely location? She cupped her hands around her lips. “Hello.” The word echoed back three times before fading. “Hello, is anybody here?”

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

Candra stumbled in her rush to turn. Her hand splashed down into the shallow water, but she managed to catch herself. Her insides tightened, as if someone pulled a belt around her waist. Bile gurgled up her throat.

“Mom?”

She had only seen the woman before her in photographs. It made no difference. She would have known her mother anywhere. Candra knew her long, blond hair hanging loose around her bare shoulders and the splattering of sand-colored freckles across her nose. She was exactly the height Candra had imagined. In fact, everything about the woman was just how she’d imagined. Her trim arms hung relaxed by her sides, and her eyes gleamed with healthy youth.

Candra took a step back into the water; it inched higher around her lower legs. Nervous energy fizzled through her veins. This had to be a trick. She’d thought about the one person she expected to see in heaven, and there she was—her mother.

It was the dress that gave her away. The woman wore a full-length gown made of a black crepe fabric. The simple empire line nipped in with a matching draped sash below the strapless bust. Candra had worn the dress to the Watcher ball, and she had seen her mother wear the dress while in the early stages of pregnancy. Sure enough, when the breeze blew, Candra caught a glimpse of a small bump under the slender line of the gown.

“You’re not her,” Candra accused, recalling how Lilith had taken her in once already. Then and now, she wanted to believe the lie so much. It was easier to believe than the truth.

The woman smiled and shook her head slowly, not denying anything.