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.
“How did you get past the blessings?” Candra demanded.
Lilith flicked her stringy hair over her shoulder. “That’s the beauty of it. I didn’t need to. All the fool needed was a little encouragement, the promise of protection and the prospect of being a hero. He came out…and he brought me a little gift.”
Candra’s muscles clenched painfully. Another of Lilith’s minions appeared at the window, holding the abandoned child. She couldn’t hear his screams, but his little face was contorted and red with frustration. He squirmed to get free. Father Patrick made no attempt to aid him.
Rage boiled up, flooded her body, and manifested in violent tremors. It was a blanket of pure, refined hate, wrapping her up and promising nothing would be right again. She was sure Lilith couldn’t know this particular child had any connection to her. He was just some random child with no parents to answer to when Father Patrick had taken him from the safety of the school.
She uncoiled and sprang at Lilith with the precision of a viper. Lilith shifted much faster than Candra could compensate for, and she missed her target entirely. Vibrations rocketed from Candra’s knees, up her thighs, and into her hips when she crashed to the ground. She rolled over quickly, rubbing her hand over her ankle, panting, with electricity surging through her. Draven was still there, although he faced away from her. She took it as a good sign. Wouldn’t his body disappear like Sebastian’s?
Lilith stood over her, placing one hand on her hip, effectively putting across that she found Candra no threat. “Either you give yourself up, or I start with the little one and move on to the rest of them in the school. After that, I will destroy every being you have ever come into contact with. It’s your choice.”
Candra frowned, and her shoulders slumped in defeat. “My choice,” she echoed in a murmur.
“What’s it to be, Candra? Do you give yourself freely?”
Candra shut her eyes, locking out all the images around her. She couldn’t lock out the sounds of crashing metal, the grunting, and the foul smell. “Yes, I will give myself freely to save them.”
She opened her eyes again and raised her chin to look at Lilith. The demon wore a smug grin.
“No, don’t,” Gabe’s voice pleaded from somewhere nearby.
She didn’t turn.
“Candra, don’t do it.”
Lilith held her hand out. Candra offered her the hand she’d used to prop herself up, keeping her other palm pressed to her ankle. Lilith’s skin was as smooth and cool as glass under Candra’s.
“There is one thing you should know.”
“What’s that?” Lilith asked as she pulled her to her feet.
Candra smoothed her hand over the soft leather from her ankle to her calf and slipped her fingers inside. With Lilith’s last tug on her hand, she whipped the blade from her boot and slammed it into Lilith’s chest, right where her heart should be. “You don’t have the Creation Blade. I do.”
Lilith’s pale eyes rounded, and her jaw fell slack. Candra grimaced and twisted the knife sharply.
“And I’m no ordinary angel,” she sneered into Lilith’s face.
Candra retracted her arm. The blade came with it, along with an explosion of smoky silver mist from the wound. The force pushed Candra backward through the air. She landed with a grunt. Pain burned through her elbow, and she knew she had to act quickly. She had seconds, if even that. She rolled over onto her knees. The mist pouring out of Lilith swirled tightly all around her. Candra could make out shapes and textures, nothing substantial, nothing to show her that she was doing this right. Lilith clutched uselessly at the gaping hole in her chest, as if attempting to contain the souls she’d consumed.
Candra reared back and slammed the blade into the ground. The concrete shattered on contact, and a glowing orange lightning bolt slithered out from the tip of the blade. The earth quaked, ripping apart right before her eyes. Lava bubbled up, and the slit elongated.
Candra’s stomach heaved, and she thought she might be sick. The stench of sulfur and ammonia hit her full force from the crack. It, and Lilith’s laughter, distracted her, and she didn’t notice the handle of the blade heating. Her palms sizzled. Candra screamed in agony and tore her hands away, losing a layer of skin to the white-hot handle. Still, the wooden handle didn’t burn. Candra’s eyes stung, and fat tears rolled over her cheeks. She couldn’t hold back any longer and emptied her stomach inches from her knees.
The mist had spread, and still, Lilith struggled. The imitation blade dropped from her hand. A cloud of silver settled over the fighting crowd where the minions had begun to writhe and twitch violently. Some bent over, coughing and spluttering a red and black smoke. It twisted around their bodies, as if attacking them, thickening to the consistency of tar and slithering over their skin.
Candra pulled herself up, planting her feet and battling to keep her balance on the shaking ground. She sensed the light creeping over her skin before she saw the pearl shimmer. This time, she didn’t try to restrain it; she welcomed it and waited for the voice to tell her she was doing the right thing. She grabbed for the blade, the hilt still embedded in the ground. Her fingers flexed around the handle, the rough surface digging into her palm and scorching her skin. Candra freed the blade with a sharp tug. No voice came, no reassurance from the Arch. For a split second, she wondered again if she’d imagined their exchange and she was about to make the worst mistake of her life. Then, she remembered this had to be her choice; the Arch would never push like Lilith did. It was enough to bolster her decision.
A gusting wind whipped up again, and lava hissed from the opening in the ground, spitting molten rock into the air and casting the vicinity in an enticing warm orange glow. All the swirling colors were deceivingly beautiful, but of course, that was how it was with evil.
Lilith laughed. Candra’s focus swiveled in her direction. Lilith’s body shook with it, and her head fell back. She gagged on the laughter and spewed more of the silver mist straight up into the sky, her body convulsing with the effort. She dragged the back of her hand across her mouth. “You are wasting your time. The Arch is trapped inside you.”
“You’re right,” Candra yelled, blood pounding in her ears.
She flung her arm out wide, her chest rising and falling so hard, it felt as though her lungs might burst right through her skin. Lilith’s eyes widened. She leaned forward and reached out to Candra, her hair rising up like snakes around her face and eyes practically bugging out of her head. Candra brought the blade around, directly in front of her, and gripped it with both hands. Her empty stomach swam with nausea. Her hands trembled, but she could feel the strength inside her muscles, telling her she’d managed to once again tap into the Arch’s power.
Draven had explained that she would need to pierce through the breastplate protecting her heart. Natural instinct played against a person stabbing themself, and her body might rebel at the critical moment to weaken her. She found strength in the silvery mist whirling through the air. The souls she’d save. Candra hoped Ivy was among them.
Lilith fought forward through the souls escaping her. “No,” she screamed.
Candra sucked in a deep breath. She wanted to make sure everyone could hear her when she roared. “I’ve made my choice, Lilith, and you…you can go to hell.” Candra pulled the blade toward her chest with as much force as she could muster.
Everything seemed to slow the instant the sharp end met her skin. There was pressure, but not as much as she expected. As soon as the point passed through flesh, the inside offered little resistance. Then the pain hit. A blistering agony like nothing she’d ever experienced concentrated into a tight ball of flames inside her chest. It sucked all other sensations away, pulling them into the tiny space inside her heart. With a savage, searing agony, it blasted outward with an explosion so bright, she was sure the sun had risen over the city. The torture left no part of her unaffected. Candra bit down on her tongue, adding to the pain already lashing through her before her locked knees gave way and she fell sideways.
Her vision doubled. Two Liliths were flung backward into the void like paper bags whipped up on an autumn day. The demons all around Candra collapsed to the ground. The red-black tar slipping away from their skin resembled oil siphoned off water and slithering toward the shattered ground—Lilith’s darkness returned to its prison with her.
Candra eyes fluttered closed as she continued to fall. It seemed an eternity passed, and the ground was a billion miles away, but it called to her like a comfortable bed after a long day.
Images flickered in her mind, except it wasn’t her life playing out. The images she saw were of another girl, another life shrouded in mystery. A girl surrounded by family and friends, celebrating birthdays, holidays, and a future opened wide and unknown before her. She was sticking pins in a map of the world and holding hands with a boy. Candra couldn’t see their faces, only faint outlines, like ghosts suspended in the possibility of what could have been in a different world. Maybe the world she was giving up to free the Arch and give the Watchers their chance for heaven. Forgive me, she thought inside the chaos of her mind.
The light grew brighter until she had to close her eyes to it. Even through her eyelids, she couldn’t block it out. White embraced her, nothing but pure white brilliant light, and the pain ceased, replaced by a wonderful numbing peace and absolute silence. Is this death? She’d ruptured her soul to free the Arch and had restored heaven. She’d expected darkness, to disappear into a great abyss that would swallow her whole like a ravenous monster, but there was only the light.
