Shinyun’s eyes were twin hollows of hate. Bernard gave a nervous little jump and took a hasty step back.
Several cultists held Magnus still as Shinyun leaped toward him, delivering a spinning wheel kick to his chest and another to his stomach, doubling him over. As he struggled to keep his feet and not be sick, they forced him into a white robe.
Bernard shoved him upright, gripping him by the arms. Magnus gazed out at the implacable crowd through pain-hazed eyes.
“Behold, the Great Poison!” Shinyun shouted. “Our founder. The prophet who brought us together and then led us astray.”
“It’s just an honor to be nominated,” Magnus gasped.
He surveyed his surroundings closely, though he had little hope for escape. He noticed a number of Raum demons guarding the tunnel entrances like ushers. Overhead, several large flying creatures swooped by. It was too dark to see what they were, but they were definitely demons of some sort, unless dinosaurs had returned.
“There is no hope for escape,” said Shinyun.
“Who was looking for escape?” asked Magnus. “Allow me to compliment you on the high production values of your demonic ritual. I trust there’s a full-service bar?”
“Quiet, Great Poison,” said the cultist on his left, who had a tight, not particularly friendly grip on his shoulder.
“I’m just suggesting,” Magnus said. “Maybe we can settle this in a civilized manner, by which I mean in a conversation over drinks.”
Bernard hit him in the face. Magnus tasted blood as Shinyun’s eyes gleamed with pleasure.
“Guess not,” Magnus said. “Gladiatorial demonic death ritual it is, then.”
Shinyun’s voice became magically enhanced, thundering over his, booming across the entire amphitheater.
“The Great Poison is a failed prophet of false teachings! Before you, my brothers and sisters, I shall strike him down and assume my place as your rightful leader, and then I will offer this unworthy fool as a sacrifice to my father. Asmodeus will rise in glory. The daughter of Asmodeus will lead you!”
The crowd stirred from their eerie silence. The cultists began to chant. “Cursed Daughter. Cursed Daughter.”
Magnus was dragged onto their little stage. Through the haze of pain and disorientation, he noticed that the cultists were careful not to trample the lines of moonflowers that circled and ran underneath the wooden platform.
Bernard had just completed salting a pentagram into the center of the stage. Rough hands grabbed Magnus by the elbow and threw him into the pentagram. Magnus got himself up into a sitting position, legs crossed under him, and tried to look casual. Bernard began to struggle through the incantation that would seal the pentagram.
After a little while, Magnus yawned loudly. “Need any help?”
Bernard’s face flushed. “Be quiet, Great Poison. I know what I’m doing.”
“If you did, you wouldn’t be here. Trust me.”
This was going to be an insultingly weak and fragile pentagram. If Magnus had his magic, he could’ve dispelled it with a breath.
Bernard finished his spell and scurried backward as showers of sparks flew up from each point of the pentagram. Magnus waved his arms around to keep the embers away, and after a moment, a few of the cultists realized that the fire could be a problem given the wooden stage, and began waving their arms and their hats at the sparks to disperse them.
The ritual was beginning in earnest.
Shinyun held out her hand, and one of the cultists put her samgakdo in it. She strode forward, the blade pointed at Magnus’s throat. She jerked her hand, nicking him just below the Adam’s apple, a shallow cut and a twinge of pain. Magnus looked down and saw crimson dripping onto his white robes.
“Do you have any club soda?” he said to Shinyun. “These stains are going to set unless we get to them quickly.”
“You will be blotted out,” said Shinyun. “You will be forgotten. First, you will know what you have lost. Time to remember, Great Poison.”
Shinyun began her own incantation. The crowd resumed chanting “Cursed Daughter,” more quietly than before. Black clouds gathered above the amphitheater, and lightning cracked around the villa, once, twice, three times. The clouds began to swirl in a dizzying circle overhead, forming a vortex that, Magnus guessed, was the beginning of the link between this world and the other.
A voice in Magnus’s head, dreadful as a door opening onto pitch dark, said, Yes, time to remember. Time to remember everything.
A harsh, unpleasant white light appeared at the center of the swirling clouds, and the tip of a funnel began to materialize. Streaks of smoke or insects or black static swarmed the white light. The tip of the funnel began to descend from the sky, directly toward Magnus, who waited helplessly for the storm to reach him. He closed his eyes.
He did not want to die like this, by the hand of a raging wounded warlock, in front of misguided and badly dressed fools, with all the stupid mistakes of his past coming to swallow the possibility of his future. If he did die, he did not want regret to be the last thing he felt.
So he thought about Alec.
Alec, with his heartbreaking contradictions, shy and brave, relentless and tender. Alec’s midnight-blue eyes, and the look on his face when they had their first kiss. And their last. Magnus had not thought today’s kiss would be their last. But nobody ever did know, when the last kiss came.
Magnus saw all his dearest friends. All his lost mortals, and all those who would live on. His mother, who he could never make laugh; Etta of the beautiful voice that had kept him dancing; his first Shadowhunter friend, Will. Ragnor, always the teacher, who had gone on before. Catarina, her healing hands and endless grace. Tessa of the steadfast heart and great courage. Raphael, who would sneer at this sentiment. His Clary, the first and last child Magnus had ever watched grow up, and the warrior woman he knew she would become.
And then Alec again.
Alec running up the steps of Magnus’s brownstone in Brooklyn to ask him out. Alec holding on to him in cold water, offering Magnus all his own strength. The stunning surprise of Alec’s warm mouth, his sure, strong hands, in the hall of his angelic ancestors. Alec shielding Downworlders at the palazzo in Venice, coming for Magnus through a cloud of demons, trying to shield Magnus through every land and at every turn. Alec choosing Magnus over the Clave every time, without hesitation. Alec turning against the Laws he had always lived by to protect Magnus and keep his secrets.
Magnus had never thought he would need protecting. He had thought it would make him weak. He had been wrong.
Dread died away. Shaking, hardly able to move, with darkness bearing down upon him, Magnus felt only gratitude for his life.
He wasn’t ready for death, but if it came today, he would face it with his head held high and Alexander Lightwood’s name on his lips.
The pain hit, shattering and abrupt. Magnus screamed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
* * *
Chains of Magic
ALEC TOOK THE MASERATI AND followed where the tracking rune led, up a winding road that spiraled around a mountain. Helen and Aline yelled at him to drive slower. He did not, taking the curves at breakneck speed. Helen smacked his shoulder, and then stared.
“By the Angel,” she said. “A tornado.”
It did look like a tornado. A crazy-looking tornado, black spirals of cloud with a harsh white glow at its center, whirling in the sky directly above a crumbling villa perched atop the mountain. It illuminated the night sky with a sickly gleam. They stopped the car halfway up the mountain and stared at it.
“You think this is the place?” Aline said dryly.
“I’m so glad we didn’t get any silly reinforcements,” muttered Helen.
The churning funnel’s menace was punctuated by periodic lightning bolts splitting the sky. When they did, thunder shook the air and the ground below them, unnatural in its closeness.
“I have to get Magnus out of there,” said Alec. He gunned the Maser
ati’s engine, sending it hurtling up the road. Helen and Aline gripped each other for dear life as the car whipped back and forth up the hairpin turns.
At the end of the road were massive iron gates through which they could see the villa’s main building. On either side of the gates, high stone ramparts extended in great curves around and then behind the building, circumscribing the grounds.
One gate was open, but two cult members were guarding the entrance, both wearing white suits and hats that might as well have glowed in the dark.
Alec left the car behind the road’s last curve, where it couldn’t be spotted from the gates. They climbed out of the car and crept to twenty feet away, without either guard noticing. On cue, Aline stepped out of their cover and waved. As they’d guessed, the cultists’ leader had made sure that a glamour wouldn’t work on the Crimson Hand, but they planned to use being visible to their advantage. In the split second the cultists looked her way, Alec pegged the guard on the left with a well-thrown rock, striking the man between the eyes and knocking him out. When the other guard turned to see what had happened to his friend, Helen charged, her body a blur as she sped across the road and tackled him to the ground. One elbow later, he was out too.
They quickly trussed the cultists up and stowed them behind a row of bushes before continuing onto the villa grounds. The front driveway was packed with cars, parked haphazardly.
Alec counted two more cultists manning the front doors and a handful milling around the driveway, but there was surprisingly little other activity. “Where did they all go?” he wondered.
“Wherever the tracking rune leads, probably,” said Helen.
Alec led them around the side of the villa, hugging the outer ramparts, until they reached the back of the main house. The ramparts continued back, but dense, overgrown gardens gone to seed blocked their ability to see farther into the grounds. He checked the tracking rune once more and pointed at the gardens. “Through there.”
“Great news,” said Aline. “That place looks like a safety hazard.”
Helen nodded. “Straight to the death tornado it is.”
Once the three of them were in the gardens, they were invisible from view from the house. They had to hack their way through thorny vines and tightly packed branches, but the wind howled and thrashed so loudly that Alec was sure no one could hear them. They crept down the length of the estate, moving from cover to cover, until the garden gave way to a clearing. The clearing ended in the ruins of a high stone wall.
Aline sucked in her breath.
A massive, bipedal lizard with a row of serrated teeth across its forehead was marching back and forth in front of the wall. It had a second, lower mouth as well, full of dripping tusks. Its whipping tail was edged with razors.
Alec squinted. “Rahab demon.” He had fought several of those just a few months ago.
Aline shuddered and shut her eyes. “I hate Rahab demons,” she said passionately. “I fought one in the war and I hate them.”
“Maybe it hasn’t seen us?” suggested Helen.
“It’s smelled us,” Aline said grimly.
Alec noticed that Aline’s fingers were trembling and her knuckles were white on the hilt of her blade. Helen reached out a hand and placed it on Aline’s. Aline smiled at her gratefully, her grip relaxing.
Helen spoke softly. “Maybe the wind will carry away our scent.”
The lizard-like demon raised its snout, licked the air with its tongue, and looked their way.
Alec grimly drew his bow. “Well, our luck so far is holding.” Without further preamble, he punched an arrow into the demon’s chest, making it stagger. Before the arrow had even struck its mark, Helen was on the move, covering the distance to the Rahab in a heartbeat. A slash to its leg just above the knee caused it to bellow in pain, and then Helen danced nimbly out of the way as it swiped at her with its massive claws. Quicker than seemed possible, its long tail swept the ground, cutting Helen’s feet out from under her.
Aline had closed the distance herself and now leaped and buried her daggers in the demon’s back. The demon emitted a high-pitched, nearly inaudible whine. Aline yanked one of her daggers out and jammed the blade into its neck. The demon reared and lashed at her with a whiplike tongue. Aline ducked under the tongue and held on for dear life, slicing at the demon with a viciousness Alec had never seen from her before, leaving the demon bleeding from a hundred wounds. She finally dove off, somersaulting onto the soft grass and back to her feet. This gave Alec the clear shot he needed. He took quick aim and buried one more arrow in its exposed neck. With a great crash it fell to the ground and vanished, leaving a sick scent in the air and lashings of ichor on the trampled grass along the stone wall.
Aline went over to Helen and offered her a hand. Helen hesitated for a moment, then clasped Aline’s hand and let Aline help her to her feet.
“Thanks for the assist,” said Helen.
Alec put his bow away and left the underbrush at the edge of the garden, joining them at the wall. “You two make a pretty good team.”
Helen looked pleased. “We do,” she agreed.
“You helped too,” Aline added loyally. Alec raised an eyebrow at her.
Alec retrieved his arrows from the ground where the demon had vanished. He led them to the lowest part of the ruined stone wall, still well above their heads, but easily scalable by trained Shadowhunters.
On the other side of the wall was a ramshackle building, smaller than the main house. In front of it were six cultists, armed to the teeth and glowing like white neon in their pale suits.
“The tracking rune says through there,” Alec said quietly, pointing to the doors of the ramshackle building ahead.
“Right through the cultists,” said Helen wearily. “Of course.”
“It’s all right,” Aline said, putting her hand to her weapons belt. “I’m in a stabby mood.”
“Okay,” Alec said. “If we spread out—”
He broke off as the scream tore the night in half. It was a long scream, of pain and horror, wrenching and deep, cutting into his soul. The voice was unmistakable.
He let out a cry of dismay of his own before he realized what he was doing.
“Alec,” Helen said in his ear, gripping his sleeve with her small hand. “Stay calm. We’ll get to him together.”
Magnus’s cry ended, but Alec had already forgotten all his strategy, all his plans. He charged forward, wielding his bow like a staff.
The cultists turned in surprise, but he was already on them. He jabbed the nearest in the abdomen as he passed, then spun and twirled his bow overhead, striking the second in the face. The third cultist threw a punch that Alec caught with his free hand. Alec turned his wrist and twisted the man’s body at a severe angle, then slammed him into the ground.
Fighting mundanes was too easy.
Helen and Aline jogged up to him, each holding a blade. Catching sight of two more angry Shadowhunters joining the one who had decimated their associates, the remaining three cultists dropped their weapons and fled.
“That’s right!” Aline called after them. “And stop worshipping demons!”
“You all right, Alec?” said Helen.
Alec breathed hard. “Working out some aggression.”
“It’s the Shadowhunter way,” agreed Aline.
“I won’t be all right until we get to Magnus,” said Alec.
Helen nodded. “Then let’s go.”
Stepping over the cultists, they cut through the crumbling building, empty save for dust and spiders, and burst out the other side into—
An amphitheater.
It was ancient-looking, sunk into the earth, terraced with stone. Along the tiers an audience of Crimson Hand members, all dressed in the same white outfits, watched the action. A long flight of stone steps led down to a large wooden platform placed on the grass, acting as a stage. Alec’s eyes found Magnus immediately: on his knees, with his head hung low, in the center of a pentagram of salt. Shinyun stood over
him, a sword in her hand. The maelstrom they’d seen from a distance was up close now, descending like a funnel directly toward Magnus, swirling with ash and light. The whole stage seemed about to be swept into the maelstrom, or burned wholly away.
Alec ran straight for it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
* * *
Old Sins
THE EARTH SHOOK, THE AIR pulsed, and Magnus felt a thousand needles puncture him from all sides. A force took hold of his mind and twisted it, squeezing it and kneading it like dough into an entirely different shape. He screamed.
Pain washed the world white. When Magnus blinked away the dazzle, he saw a small room with plaster ceilings and heard a familiar voice calling his name.
“Magnus.”
The owner of that voice was dead.
Magnus turned slowly and saw Ragnor Fell, sitting across the scarred wooden table from Magnus himself—a second Magnus. A younger, less-incapacitated-by-excruciating-pain Magnus. They were both holding large tin mugs, both in extreme disarray, and both very drunk. Ragnor’s white hair was snarled around his horns, like clouds that had been caught in a jet propeller. Ragnor’s green cheeks were flushed dark emerald.
He looked absurd. It was good to see him again.
Magnus realized he was trapped inside his own memory, forced to witness.
He approached Ragnor, and Ragnor reached a hand across the table. Magnus wanted to be the one his friend was reaching for. Hope was all it took; he felt his past and present selves reach toward one another, coalescing into a single body. Magnus was once again the man he had been, about to come face-to-face with the things he had done.
Ragnor said gently, “I’m worried about you.”
Magnus waved his mug with studied carelessness. Most of the contents sloshed on the table. “I’m having fun.”
“Are you really?” asked Ragnor.
The ghosts of old pain burned in him, alive and fierce for a moment. His first love, the one who had stayed, had died of old age in his arms. There had been too many attempts to find love since. He had lost too many friends already, and was too young to yet know how to deal with the loss.
The Red Scrolls of Magic Page 25
