Lord of Shadows The Dark Artifices 2

11

O

N A

B

LACK

T

HRONE

Kit sat on the steps of the Institute, looking out at the water.

It had been a long and uncomfortable day. Things were tenser than ever between the Centurions and the inhabitants of the Institute, though at least the Centurions didn’t know why.

Diana had made a heroic effort to teach lessons, as if everything were normal. No one could concentrate—for once Kit, despite being completely at sea regarding the comparisons of various seraphic alphabets, wasn’t the most distracted person in the room. But the point of the lessons was to keep up appearances in front of the Centurions, so they slogged on.

Things didn’t get much better at dinner. After a long, wet day during which they hadn’t found anything, the Centurions were testy. It didn’t help that Jon Cartwright had apparently had some kind of temper tantrum and stalked off, his whereabouts unknown. Judging by Zara’s thinly compressed lips, he’d had an argument with her, though about what, Kit could only wonder. The morality of locking warlocks up in camps or escorting faeries to torture chambers, he guessed.

Diego and Rayan did their best to make cheerful conversation, but it failed. Livvy stared at Diego for most of the meal, probably thinking about their plan to use him to stop Zara, but it was clearly making Diego nervous, since he tried twice to cut his steak with a spoon. To make it worse, Dru and Tavvy seemed to pick up on the prickly vibes in the room and spent dinner peppering Diana with questions about when Julian and the others would be back from their “mission.”

When it was all over, Kit thankfully slipped away, avoiding the washing-up after dinner, and found himself a quiet spot under the front portico of the house. The air blowing off the desert was cool and spiced, and the ocean gleamed under the stars, a sheet of deep black that ended in a series of unfurling white waves.

For the thousandth time, Kit asked himself what was keeping him here. While it seemed silly to disappear because of awkward dinner conversation, he’d been reminded sharply in the past day that the Blackthorns’ problems weren’t his, and probably never should be. It was one thing to be Johnny Rook’s son.

It was another thing completely to be a Herondale.

He touched the silver of the ring on his finger, cool against his skin.

“I didn’t know you were out here.” It was Ty’s voice; Kit knew it before he looked up. The other boy had come around the side of the house and was looking up at him curiously.

There was something around Ty’s neck, but it wasn’t his usual earphones. As he came up the stairs, a slim shadow in dark jeans and sweater, Kit realized it had eyes.

He pressed his back against the wall. “Is that a ferret?”

“It’s wild,” said Ty, leaning against the railing around the porch. “Ferrets are domesticated. So technically, it’s a weasel, though if it was domesticated, it would be a ferret.”

Kit stared at the animal. It blinked its eyes at him and wiggled its small paws.

“Wow,” Kit said. He meant it.

The weasel ran down Ty’s arm and leaped onto the railing, then disappeared into the darkness. “Ferrets make great pets,” Ty said. “They’re surprisingly loyal. Or at least, people say it’s surprising. I don’t know why it would be. They’re clean, and they like toys and quiet. And they can be trained to—” He broke off. “Are you bored?”

“No.” Kit was jolted; had he looked bored? He’d been enjoying the sound of Ty’s voice, lively and thoughtful. “Why?”

“Julian says sometimes people don’t want to know as much about some topics as I do,” said Ty. “So I should just ask.”

“I guess that’s true for everyone,” said Kit.

Ty shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m different.” He didn’t sound bothered, or at all upset about it. It was a fact he knew about himself and that was all. Ty had a quiet confidence Kit found to his surprise that he envied. He never thought he would have envied anything about a Shadowhunter.

Ty climbed up onto the porch beside Kit and sat down. He smelled faintly of desert, sand and sage. Kit thought of the way he’d liked the sound of Ty’s voice: It was rare to hear someone get that kind of sincere pleasure out of simply sharing information. He guessed it might be a coping mechanism, too—with the unpleasantness of the Centurions, and the worry about Julian and the others, Ty was probably stressed out.

“Why are you outside?” Ty asked Kit. “Are you thinking about running away again?”

“No,” Kit said. He wasn’t, really. Maybe a little. Looking at Ty made him not want to think about it. It made him want to discover a mystery so he could present it to Ty for solving, the way you might give someone who loved candy a box of See’s.

“I wish we all could,” Ty said, with disarming frankness. “It took us a long time to feel safe here, after the Dark War. Now it feels as if the Institute is full of enemies again.”

“The Centurions, you mean?”

“I don’t like having them all here,” said Ty. “I don’t like crowds of people in general. When they’re all talking at the same time, and making noise. Crowds are the worst—especially places like the Pier. Have you ever been there?” He made a face. “All the lights and the shouting and the people. It’s like broken glass in my head.”

“What about fighting?” asked Kit. “Battles, killing demons, that must be pretty noisy and loud?”

Ty shook his head. “Battle is different. Battle is what Shadowhunters do. Fighting is in my body, not my mind. As long as I can wear headphones—”

He broke off. In the distance, Kit heard a delicate shattering, like a window being blown in by a hurricane.

Ty exploded into a standing position, almost stepping on Kit, and drew a seraph blade from his weapons belt. He gripped it, staring out toward the ocean with a look as set as the glares on the statues in the garden behind the Institute.

Kit scrambled up after him, his heart hammering. “What’s wrong? What was that?”

“Wards—the wards the Centurions put up—that’s the sound of them breaking,” said Ty. “Something’s coming. Something dangerous.”

“I thought you said the Institute was safe!”

“It usually is,” Ty said, and raised the blade in his hand. “Adriel,” he said, and the blade seemed to burn up from within. The glow lit the night, and in its illumination Kit saw that the road leading up to the Institute was packed with moving shapes. Not human ones—a surge of dark things, slippery and dank and undulating, and a stink rolled up toward them from below, one that almost made Kit gag. He remembered having been on Venice Beach once and passing the rotting corpse of a seal, festooned in maggoty seaweed—it stank like that, but worse.

“Hold this,” Ty said, and a second later Kit found that Ty had shoved his blazing seraph blade into Kit’s hand.

It was like holding a live wire. The sword seemed to pulse and writhe, and it was all Kit could do to hang on to it. “I’ve never held one of these before!” he said.

“My brother always says you have to start somewhere.” Ty had detached a dagger from his belt. It was short and sharp and seemed altogether less fearsome a weapon than the seraph blade.

Which brother? Kit wondered, but he didn’t have a chance to ask—he could hear shouts now, and running feet, and he was glad because the dark tide of things was nearly at the top of the road. He had turned his wrist a way he wouldn’t have thought was possible, and the blade seemed steadier in his hand—it glowed without heat, as if it were composed of whatever made stars or moonlight.

“So now that everyone’s awake,” Kit said, “I don’t suppose that means we retreat inside?”

Ty was pulling his headphones out of his pocket, bracing his black-sneakered feet just above the top step. “We’re Shadowhunters,” he said. “We don’t run.”

The moon came out from behind the cloud then, just as the door behind Kit and Ty flew open, and Shadowhunters poured out. Several of the Centurions carried witchlights: The night lit up, and Kit saw the things coming up the road, spilling onto the grass. They clamored toward the Institute, and on the porch the Shadowhunters raised their weapons.

“Sea demons,” he heard Diana say grimly, and Kit knew suddenly that he was about to be in his first real battle, whether he liked it or not.

Kit whirled around. The night was full of light and noise. The brilliance of seraph blades illuminated the darkness, which was a blessing and a curse.

Kit could see Livvy and Diana with their weapons, followed by Diego, a massive ax in his hand. Zara and the other Centurions were just behind.

But he could also see the sea demons, and they were much worse than he’d imagined. There were things that looked like prehistoric lizards, scaled with stone, their heads a mass of dripping needle teeth and dead black eyes. Things that looked like pulsing jelly with fanged mouths, in which hideous organs hung: misshapen hearts, transparent stomachs in which Kit could discern the outlines of what one of them had just eaten—something with human arms and legs . . . Things like huge squids with leering faces and tentacles dotted with suckers from which green acid dripped to the ground, leaving seared holes in the grass.

The demons who’d killed his father were looking pretty attractive by comparison.

“By the Angel,” Diana breathed. “Get behind me, Centurions.”

Zara shot her a nasty look, though the Centurions were mostly clustered on the porch, gaping. Only Diego looked as if he literally couldn’t wait to hurl himself into the fray. Veins stood out on his forehead, and his hand trembled with hatred.

“We are Centurions,” Zara said. “We don’t take orders from you—”

Diana whirled on her. “Shut up, you stupid child,” she said in a voice of cold fury. “As if the Dearborns didn’t cower in Zurich during the Dark War? You’ve never been in a real battle. I have. Don’t speak another word.”

Zara reeled back, rigid with shock. Not a one of her Centurions, not even Samantha or Manuel, moved to argue for her.

The demons—squawking, flapping, and sliding across the grass—had nearly reached the porch. Kit felt Livvy edging toward him and Ty, moving to stand in front of him. They were trying to block him, he realized suddenly. To protect him. He felt a wave of gratitude, and then a wave of annoyance—did they think he was a helpless mundane?

He’d fought demons before. Deep down in his soul, something was stirring. Something that made the seraph blade blaze brighter in his hand. Something that made him understand the look on Diego’s face as he turned to Diana and said, “Orders?”

“Kill them all, obviously,” Diana said, and the Centurions began to pour down the stairs. Diego plunged his ax into the first one he saw; runes gleamed along the blade as it slashed through jelly, spraying gray-black blood.

Kit threw himself forward. The space in front of the steps had become a melee. He saw the full power of seraph blades as Centurions plunged and stabbed, and the air filled with the stench of demon blood, and the blade in his hand blazed and blazed and something caught his wrist, trapping him at the top of the steps.

It was Livvy. “No,” she said. “You’re not ready—”

“I’m fine,” he protested. Ty was halfway down the steps; he drew his hand back and flung the dagger he was still holding. It sank into the wide, flat flounder-eye of a rearing fish-headed demon, which blinked into oblivion.

He turned back to look at Kit and his sister. “Livvy,” he said. “Let him—”

The door slammed open again, and to Kit’s surprise, it was Arthur Blackthorn, still in jeans with his bathrobe over them, but he had jammed his feet into shoes at least. An ancient, tarnished sword dangled from his hand.

Diana, locked in combat with a lizard-demon, looked up in horror. “Arthur, no!”

Arthur was panting. There was terror on his face, but something else as well, a sort of fierceness. He hurtled down the steps, flinging himself at the first demon he saw—a fringed, reddish thing with a single massive mouth and a long stinger. As the stinger came down, he sliced it in half, sending the creature bobbing and shrieking through the air like a deflating balloon.

Livvy released Kit. She was staring at her uncle in amazement. Kit turned to descend the stairs, just as the demons began to draw back—retreating, but why? The Centurions had started to cheer as the space before the Institute cleared, but to Kit, it seemed too soon. The demons hadn’t been losing. They hadn’t been winning, but it was too early for a retreat.

“Something’s going on,” he said, looking between Livvy and Ty, both of whom were poised on the steps with him. “Something’s wrong—”

Laughter pierced the air. The demons froze in a semicircle, blocking the way to the road, but not moving forward. In the middle of their semicircle walked a figure out of a horror movie.

It had once been a man; he still had the blurred shape of one, but his skin was fish-belly gray-green, and he limped because most of one arm and his side had been chewed away. His shirt hung in rags, showing where the white bones of his ribs had been picked clean, the drained gray skin around his terrible wounds.

His hair was mostly gone, though what remained of it was bone-white. His face was drowned and bloated, his eyes gone milky, bleached by seawater. He smiled with a mouth that was mostly lipless. In his hand he clutched a black sack, its fabric stained wet and dark.

“Shadowhunters,” he said. “How I’ve missed you.”

It was Malcolm Fade.

* * *

In the silence that followed the unmasking of the Unseelie champion, Julian could hear his own heart slamming against his chest. He felt the burning of his parabatai rune, a clear searing pain. Emma’s pain.

He wanted to go to her. She stood like a knight in a painting, her head bowed and her sword at her side, blood splattering her gear, her hair half-torn out of its bindings, floating down around her. He saw her lips move: He knew what she was saying, even if he couldn’t hear her. It cut through him with memories of the Emma he had known what seemed like a thousand years ago, a little girl reaching out her arms for her father to lift her up.

Daddy?

The King laughed. “Cut his throat, girl,” he said. “Or can’t you kill your own father?”

“Father?” Cristina echoed. “What does he mean?”

“That’s John Carstairs,” said Mark. “Emma’s father.”

“But how—”

“I don’t know,” Julian said. “It’s impossible.”

Emma dropped to her knees, sliding Cortana back into its scabbard. In the moonlight she and her father were shadows as she bent over him.

The King began to laugh, his eerie face split by a wide grin, and the Court laughed with him, howls of mirth exploding around them.

No one was paying attention to the three Shadowhunters in the center of the clearing.

Julian wanted to go to Emma. He wanted it desperately. But he was someone who was used to not doing, or getting, what he wanted. He spun toward Mark and Cristina. “Go to her,” he said to Cristina. Her dark eyes widened. “Go to him,” he said to Mark, and Mark nodded and slipped into the crowd, a shadow into shadows.

Cristina disappeared after him, plunging the opposite way into the crowd. The courtiers were still laughing, the sound of their ridicule rising up, painting the night. Human emotions are so foolish to them, and human minds and hearts so fragile.

Julian slid a dagger from his belt. Not a seraph blade, or even a runed one, but it was cold iron, and fit comfortably into his palm. The princes among the knights were looking toward the pavilion, laughing. It took Julian only a few steps to reach them, to throw his arms around Prince Erec from the back and press the edge of his dagger to his throat.

* * *

Kit’s first, distracted thought was, So that’s why they haven’t been able to find Malcolm’s body.

His second was a memory. The High Warlock had been a fixture of the Shadow Market, and friendly with Kit’s father—though he had only learned later that they had been more than acquaintances, but partners in crime. Still, the lively, purple-eyed warlock had been popular at the Market, and had sometimes produced interesting candy for Kit that he claimed came from faraway places he had traveled to.

It had been strange for Kit to realize that the friendly warlock he knew was a murderer. It was even stranger now to see what Malcolm had become. The warlock moved forward, stripped of all his previous grace, lurching over the grass. The Shadowhunters snapped into formation, like a Roman legion: They faced Malcolm in a line, shoulder to shoulder, their weapons out. Only Arthur stood alone. He stared at Malcolm, his mouth working.

The grass in front of them all was seared black and gray by demon blood.

Malcolm smirked, as well as he could with his ruined face. “Arthur,” he said, gazing at the shrinking man in his bloodstained bathrobe. “You must miss me. You don’t look as if you’re doing well without your medication. Not at all.”

Arthur flattened himself against the Institute wall. There was a murmur among the Centurions, cut off when Diana spoke. “Malcolm,” she said. She sounded remarkably calm, considering. “What do you want?”

He came to a stop, close to the Centurions, though not close enough for them to strike. “Have you been enjoying looking for my body, Centurions? It’s been a real treat to watch you. Splashing around in your invisible boat, no idea what you’re looking for or how to find it. But then you never have been much use without warlocks, have you?”

“Silence, filth,” said Zara, vibrating like an electrical wire. “You—”

Divya elbowed her. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Let Diana talk.”

“Malcolm,” said Diana, in the same cold tone. “Things aren’t like they were before. We have the might of the Clave on our side. We know who you are, and we will find out where you are. You are a fool to have come here and shown your hand.”

“My hand,” he mused. “Where is my hand again? Oh, right. It’s inside this bag . . . .” He plunged his hand into the sack he’d been carrying. When he drew it out, he was carrying a severed human head.

There was a horrified silence.

“Jon!” Diego said hoarsely.

Gen Aldertree seemed about to collapse. “Oh God, poor Marisol. Oh—”

Zara was staring with openmouthed horror, though she made no move to go forward. Diego took a step, but Rayan caught his arm as Diana snapped, “Centurions! Remain in formation!”

There was a gagging sound as Malcolm threw Jon Cartwright’s severed head onto the bare grass. Kit realized he’d made the noise himself. He was staring at Jon’s exposed spinal column. It was very white against the dark ground.

“I suppose you’re right,” Malcolm said to Diana. “It’s rather time to give up our pretenses, isn’t it? You know my weaknesses—and I know yours. Killing this one”—he gestured at Jon’s remains—“took seconds, and taking down your wards took less. Do you think it will take much longer for me to get something I actually want?”

“And what is that?” said Diana. “What is it you want, Malcolm?”

“I want what I’ve always wanted. I want Annabel and what it will take to get her back.” Malcolm laughed. It was a gurgling sort of sound. “I want my Blackthorn blood.”

* * *

Emma couldn’t remember dropping to her knees, but she was kneeling.

Churned ground and dead leaves were all around her. The faerie knight—her father—was on his back in a pool of spreading blood. It soaked into the already dark earth and turned it nearly black.

“Daddy,” she whispered. “Daddy, please look at me.”

She hadn’t said the word “daddy” in years. Probably since she was seven years old.

Blue eyes opened in his scarred face. He looked just as Emma remembered him—blond whiskers where he’d forgotten to shave, lines of kindness around his eyes. Dried blood spattered his cheek. He stared at her, wide-eyed.

The King laughed. “Cut his throat,” he said. “Or can’t you kill your own father, girl?”

John Carstairs’s lips moved, but no sound came out.

You will see again the face of someone you loved, who is dead, the phouka had said. But Emma had never dreamed this, not this.

She caught hold of her father’s arm, covered in leathery faerie armor. “I concede,” she said raggedly, “I concede, I concede, just help him—”

“She has conceded,” said the King.

The Court began to laugh. Laughter rose up around Emma, though she barely heard it. A voice in the back of her head was telling her that this wasn’t right, there was a fundamental wrongness here, but the sight of her father was roaring in her head like the sound of a crashing wave. She reached for a stele—he was still a Shadowhunter after all—but dropped her hand; no iratze would work here.

“I won’t leave you,” she said. Her head was buzzing. “I won’t leave you here.” She gripped his arm tighter, crouching at the foot of the pavilion, aware of the King’s gaze on her, the laughter all around. “I’ll stay.”

* * *

It was Arthur who moved. He burst away from the wall, careening toward Livvy and Ty. He seized each of them by an arm and propelled them toward the Institute door.

They both struggled, but Arthur seemed shockingly strong. Livvy half-turned, calling Kit’s name. Arthur kicked the front door open and shoved his niece and nephew through. Kit could hear Livvy shouting, and the door slammed behind them.

Diana arched an eyebrow at Malcolm. “Blackthorn blood, you said?”

Malcolm sighed. “Mad dogs and Englishmen,” he said. “And sometimes you encounter someone who’s both. He can’t think that would work.”

“Are you saying you can get into the Institute?” Diego demanded.

“I’m saying it doesn’t matter,” said Malcolm. “I set this all up before Emma killed me. My death—and I am dead, though not for long, isn’t the Black Volume wonderful?—released the sea demons along this coast. What you see with me tonight is a tiny fraction of the numbers I control. Either you bring me a Blackthorn, or I send them up on land to murder and destroy mundanes.”

“We will stop you,” Diana said. “The Clave will stop you. They will send Shadowhunters—”

“There aren’t enough of you,” said Malcolm, with glee. He had begun to pace up and down in front of the wall of sea demons that slavered behind him. “That’s the beauty of the Dark War. You simply can’t hold off every demon in the Pacific, not with your current numbers. Oh, I’m not saying you might not win eventually. You would. But think of the death toll in the meantime. Is one measly Blackthorn really worth it?”

“We’re not going to give you one of our own to murder, Fade,” said Diana. “You know better than that.”

“You don’t speak for the Clave, Diana,” said Malcolm. “And they are not above sacrifices.” He tried to grin. One rotted lip split, and black fluid spilled down his chin. “One for many.”

Diana was breathing hard, her shoulders rising and falling angrily. “And then what? All that death and destruction and what will you gain?”

“You will have also suffered,” said Malcolm. “And that is enough for me, for now. That the Blackthorns suffer.” His eyes raked the group in front of him. “Where are my Julian and Emma? And Mark? Too cowardly to face me?” He chuckled. “Too bad. I would have liked to see Emma’s face when she laid eyes on me. You may tell her I said I hope the curse consumes them both.”

Consumes who? Kit thought, but Malcolm’s gaze had dipped to focus on him, and he saw the warlock’s milky eyes glitter. “Sorry about your father, Herondale,” said Malcolm. “It couldn’t be helped.”

Kit raised Adriel over his head. The seraph blade was hot under his grip, starting to flicker, but it cast a glow all around him, one he hoped illuminated him enough that the warlock could see it when he spat in his direction.

Malcolm’s gaze flattened. He turned back to Diana. “I will give you until tomorrow night to decide. Then I will return. If you do not provide a Blackthorn to me, the coast will be ravaged. In the meantime—” He snapped his fingers, and a dim purple fire flickered in the air. “Enjoy amusing yourselves with my friends here.”

He vanished as the sea demons surged forward toward the Centurions.