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 Lofi 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.
Still catching her breath, Candra’s eyes flickered to Lofi again. Lofi pressed her lips together and discreetly lifted her finger to them.
He doesn’t know. Why didn’t Lofi tell Sebastian about the meeting with Lilith? If his reaction wasn’t to that, what else could it be?
“What am I missing here?” Candra asked suspiciously. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one with secrets.
Sebastian beamed a megawatt smile, igniting the longing inside her again. “I made a promise, and I intend to keep it. I promised you a date.”
Candra’s eyes widened when it dawned on her what he meant. “I’m not sure,” she started hesitantly. She didn’t want to hurt Sebastian’s feelings—she’d been doing enough of that lately already. However, a date now didn’t make sense at all.
“Now is the perfect time.” Sebastian’s expression shifted to serious in less than a heartbeat. The tip of his tongue swept across his bottom lip before he continued. “I don’t want to waste a minute when we don’t know what’s going to happen next. I’ve spent far too much of my life passing time. I don’t want to just pass time anymore. Not with you.”
He clearly meant his romantic declaration. The gesture probably would have bowled her over, except she did have some idea of what was coming next. Guilt chipped away at her conscience because she’d walked in the door not intending to tell him everything she knew.
“Sebastian—”
He placed a finger over her lips, muffling the end of his name. Sadness fizzed like acid inside her, eating away at her. Perhaps she was always destined to give up everything. Lilith’s words taunted her: “The Arch made you and molded you so that the most powerful of his children would protect you…”
It hadn’t registered at the time Lilith had said it, maybe because Candra had been too distracted by everything else Lilith said. Now that she thought about it, she couldn’t help wondering what that indicated about her relationship with Sebastian, and the others for that matter. Did it mean the Watchers around her loved her because some genetic glitch inspired them to?
“I’m not taking no for an answer.” Sebastian smiled again, a sexy, uneven smile full of swagger and confidence. One Candra was sure he had used on many women successfully.
Her will caved like a sandcastle in the rain, and a smile almost as wide as his crept across her face.
“Well, now that’s sorted, we can get the girlie bits out of the way,” Lofi chipped in. She wasn’t quite able to hide the impatience in her tone. Again, Sebastian didn’t notice, or possibly misinterpreted it for excitement to get their evening underway. Of course, there was always the possibility Candra was more attuned to it because she knew Lofi would be eager to talk.
Sebastian picked Candra’s discarded bag up and handed it to her.
“You can get the key bowl while you’re at it there, stud,” Lofi instructed.
Sebastian rolled his eyes and scooped up the bowl and keys from the floor. “I will pick you up in a couple of hours.”
Candra frowned and looked down at her Saint Francis uniform. “Don’t I need to change?”
“Sorted.” Lofi chuckled. “Sebastian discovered his inner fashionista and has everything arranged.”
“Shut up,” he muttered in response. A barely visible flush brightened his cheeks. He shrugged. “You said you were uncomfortable in the townhouse. I didn’t want you to be uncomfortable tonight. Don’t worry, I didn’t pick out anything. I used one of those in-store shoppers.”
“Oh.” She really wished she could come up with something to say. It was kind of weird to have someone buy her clothes for that reason, but on the other hand, it was sweet and very un-Sebastian-like of him. She couldn’t decide if she liked the idea of it or not, not when her underlying guilt flared up again. They hadn’t been on a first date, and she was already lying. Okay, it was more of an omission of truth. Somehow, she felt as if the elephant in the room was preparing to stampede.
Candra waited until Sebastian left and they were safely ensconced in Lofi’s bedroom before she asked the question on the tip of her tongue since Lofi had cut off her apology. “Enquiring minds want to know, what was that about?”
“I didn’t tell him,” Lofi replied nonchalantly, tossing three long dress bags onto her white comforter.
“Where does he think I was?”
“Trying to break into her office. I thought it best not to stray too far from the truth.”
In contrast to Sebastian’s room, Lofi’s room looked lived-in and feminine. Square with the same large sash windows and paneled walls, except that flowing soft-white drapes accentuated the ones in here. Her sumptuous bed was a huge carved mahogany monster with masses of fluffed up pillows. A matching dressing table with a decorative oval mirror and an assortment of perfumes bottles and make-up sat against the wall. Fitted closets overtook the length of the room opposite the end of the bed. The paneled doors blended perfectly with the other walls. Candra wouldn’t have noticed them at all if a couple of the doors weren’t slightly ajar, revealing rail after rail of clothing. Unlike Sebastian’s bare floor, plush white carpets covered Lofi’s floors.
“I guessed you didn’t tell him,” Candra said. “I don’t get why not.”
Lofi’s brow creased. She flicked her hair over her shoulder and bent over to unzip the first of the bags. “I don’t know why.”
“What?”
“You heard me. I don’t know why. I came back here, and he was…” Lofi leaned back. She peered up at the ceiling as if she might find the answers written there. “He was happy.” She looked at Candra, her eyes still tighter and her expression grievous in a way Candra always thought seemed alien on her. “Desperate in a kind of sad-puppy-dog-yelping-for-attention way, but happy. Do you know what it’s like to watch someone you love break their own heart over and over?”
Candra slumped down onto the bed, sinking into the luxurious white covering with her hands in her lap. “This is a disaster.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask.” Lofi began twisting her long hair into a knot at the back of her head.
Candra opened her mouth, ready to spill her guts. Besides having second thoughts about keeping Lilith’s proposal to herself, it was incredibly hard to lie to Lofi. Before now, she would have worried everything she said would go back to Sebastian, but apparently, Lofi was capable of keeping a confidence.
“How long does Ivy have?” It wasn’t what she intended to say at all, but the question just came out. Candra couldn’t shake the feeling that Ivy’s soul was disintegrating inside Lilith. Her eyes had given it away. Feeding on humans seemed a last resort for her, and Candra was grateful for that small mercy. A knot snapped in her stomach—Ivy had gotten caught up in this because of her.
Lofi chewed on her lip and hummed some unintelligible words Candra couldn’t make out but suspected were not words she would normally use in company. She pushed the bags aside and sat beside Candra.
“Okay, this is how it works from what I know. Lilith was the first of her kind.”
“Sebastian told me that much. She’s a demon.”
Lofi blinked at the use of the word. “She’s more than that. She’s a parasite sucking the soul’s strength until there is nothing left, and then she moves on to another. Her darkness corrupts anything she consumes.”
Candra sucked in a breath. “Can she release those souls?”
“There are stories, but how can we know what’s true and what isn’t?”
“What kind of stories?”
“That she has the ability to take a healthy human soul and replace it with something else.”
“With what?” Candra asked, appalled at the idea—instant demon army.
Lofi sucked the corner of her bottom lip between her teeth. “I don’t know. Look, to us, Lilith is the equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster. She’s an urban legend. She couldn’t be the big bad because she has no way into heaven.”
“She claims she does. She claims she can send the Watchers back.”
Lofi gave a determined shake of her head and took Candra’s hand. “Bull.”
Candra blinked at the force behind Lofi’s venom.
“Lilith is a liar. Don’t trust her.”
“How long?”
“A couple of weeks…maybe. I have no idea how she crawled out, but she can’t be the big bad. The only way we know of that can open the gates was destroyed long ago when we were trapped here.”
“Oh?” Candra prompted, needing more. A cold sweat broke out across her back.
“The Creation Blade. Besides the Arch obviously, it’s the only thing that can break the seals. It was said angels couldn’t use it, and we feared it because even the smallest wound from the blade couldn’t be healed and would eventually prove fatal.”
“Who destroyed it?” Instant blind panic drained the blood from her brain. She couldn’t think straight. So, not some decrepit old dagger. Lilith possessed a key to the gates of heaven and hell. If she didn’t act as a vessel, Acheron would be like an all-you-can-eat buffet with Lilith spitting out minions left and right. It would be a bloodbath, a massacre of the human race. All those souls destroyed.
She swallowed thickly, thinking of it, a war between angels and demons. If she did give herself over, how could she be sure Lilith wouldn’t destroy the Watchers anyway? That was the second time Lilith had tried to deceive her into giving herself over.
Lofi narrowed her eyes and shifted to face Candra front on, still gripping her hand. Candra squirmed under the concentrated scrutiny and watched the golden specks in Lofi’s eyes flicker and catch the light, as if dancing.
“What did Lilith tell you?”
Candra jerked her hand away and pushed herself from the bed. Pins and needles prickled under her skin, like tiny fingers prodding her from the inside and testing her will, endlessly searching for a way out. Restlessly, she moved across the room to the dressing table and picked up a comb. Candra tossed it hand to hand while she tried to come up with a plausible lie. The truth was out of the question now. They were wrong. Lilith was the threat after all and worse than any of them could have foreseen. And she was right: the only question was how much Candra would lose.
Think, she ordered herself. If she was the weapon that could avert this, she would have to figure out pretty damn quickly what kind of weapon. She’d have to keep the status quo until then, let Lilith think she was considering her proposal and keep Sebastian and Draven from figuring out Lilith’s plan.
“What else do you know about her? How did she get past my guards?”
“We think she may be able to hide herself, make it so she can’t be seen.”
“What?” Candra panicked. “She could be anywhere.”
“Calm down.” Lofi held her hands up in front of her. “What did she say to you?”
Candra took a breath, forcing herself to relax. “She apologized for breaking into my room and told me she wants to be left alone. She said she’d heard we had bigger fish to fry and her being here should be the least of my worries.” She struggled to keep her voice even and her heartbeat in check, but Candra rationalized it. She planned to convey the entire conversation later, and this was nothing more than a delay for the greater good. “She’s got a point. Lilith is really the least of our worries.”
“But Ivy—” Lofi shot to her feet.
Candra slammed the comb down. “Ivy is one soul,” Candra snapped. “One soul versus who knows how many if we allow Lilith to distract the Watchers from whatever else we should be waiting for. Lilith is nothing more than an ill-timed nuisance. Anyway, you are the one who didn’t tell Sebastian.”
Lofi eyed her warily, very obviously skeptical. Candra shifted foot to foot and clenched her fist behind her back. Somehow, the fist turned into crossed fingers. A child again, telling lies and hoping the small protective gesture would spare her the consequences.
“I’m going to regret this.” Lofi sighed.
